CFP: The Arts and the Public

New England American Studies Association Annual Conference

Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA

October 1-3, 2010

The New England American Studies Association welcomes proposals for its 2010
conference on "The Arts and the Public," to be held at the Massachusetts
Historical Society, October, 1-3, 2010. Proposals for papers, panels,
workshops, and other forms of presentation will be accepted at
neasacouncilgmail.com through April 9, 2010. Proposals are limited to 300
words. NEASA welcomes proposals from across the disciplines, from
primary/secondary as well as higher ed, from artists as well as scholars, and
from outside the academy as well as within. More information is available at
www.neasa.org.

The relationship between the arts and the public has always been both
contentious and celebrated in American life. From debates over the propriety
of early American novels to present-day attacks on public-arts funding, from
nineteenth-century responses to abolitionist literature to controversial
post-9/11 representations of Muhammad, the link between the artistic and civic
has long generated suspicion and argument. At the same time, the arts are
frequently understood as an essential component of an education in democratic
citizenship and have throughout the twentieth century been supported by the
state. Indeed, the establishment and institutionalization of American Studies
itself owes a great deal to such state sponsorship. It is clear that the arts
interpellate, just as they also help construct new publics - new collectivities
based on race, gender, sexuality, and other orientations - that challenge
dominant values of the public. The histories of social and identity movements
are also the histories of art and aesthetics.

In inviting proposals for papers, panels, workshops, and presentations on this
topic, NEASA conceives of "the arts" and "the public" very broadly. We welcome
work on the visual, literary, print, (new) media, performance, photographic,
musical, cinematic, plastic, fine, and popular arts, as well as material
culture, industrial arts, kitsch, built environments, architecture, and
folklore. We hope for papers and panels on public policy, public funding,
Public History, Public Humanities, public art, public education, public sphere
theory, and counterpublics. Papers may even challenge the very idea of "the
arts" and "the public." Participants may address the topic historically,
theoretically, politically. We are interested in the work of practitioners as
well as scholars, of visual and performance artists as well as those who work
with the arts in public institutions.

Additional fields and objects of engagement might include:

Black Arts Movement

Blacklists

The New Deal and WPA

Native-American arts

Arts and the border

Transnational arts

Documentary

Histories of public art

Folk art and folklore

Publication and circulation

Privatization of publishing

Free publishing

New Media and the public sphere

Popular music

Copyright, patent, and intellectual property

Open Source and open access

Open universities

Secondary Education and the Arts

NEA

Culture fronts

Relational aesthetics

Queer film, zines, poetry, fiction, performance . . .

Art of the book

Graphic novels

Illustration

Religious iconography

On-line learning

American Studies and the public

The history of American Studies and other disciplines

The crisis in the humanities

Cultural tourism

Art markets and criticism

Private/public splits

Questions of cultural identity and the public sphere

Citizenship and the arts

The neoliberal notion of culture

Controversies and censorship

Education and pedagogy

Culture wars

Public funding of the arts

Sociology of literature and art

The intersection of the aesthetic and the political

Museum studies

Democracy and the arts

neasacouncilgmail.com
www.neasa.org