Call for Papers: "Ruin and Reparation: (Dis)Repair in Art and Architectural History."

Hosted by the History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of Pittsburgh.
Keynote speaker: Dr. Felecia Davis, Pennsylvania State University.

Our symposium "Ruin and Reparation: (Dis)Repair in Art and Architectural History" seeks to foster urgent conversations regarding the reparability and/or irreparability of longstanding historical narratives and structural inequities. Thinking alongside our departmental Constellations (a curricular and programming framework that unites disparate research interests across shared themes), this biennial graduate student symposium inaugurates our newly formed Reparation Constellation. We invite submissions from current and recent graduate students across disciplines whose work engages with themes of reparation from all temporalities, cultures, and geographies. 

In the Japanese artistic process of kintsugi (金継ぎ), broken pottery is repaired with a lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum, creating visible repairs that index the object's life. But how might we repair the fragments of a pot which never actually held water? Art, architecture, and their histories are implicated in processes that have upheld social hierarchies, enabled cultural dispossession, and created peripheries. And yet, artists, architects, scholars, and activists often use their creative agency to redress and upend these structural barriers. Is a reparative history of art and architecture possible? How can we move forward given the legacies we’ve inherited, if at all?

We welcome presentations that take traditional and nontraditional formats that engage and/or critique of the notions of “repair,” broadly conceived across academic fields/subfields, architectural and urban planning practices, digital scholarship and methods, or artistic practices among other possibilities. Potential topics include and are not limited to the following:
Cultural stewardship (Repatriation; Museum/Curatorial Studies; Archives and Collections)
Institutional critique and radical political thought (e.g. environmental justice, anarchism, Afropessimism)
Intersections of identity and art, architecture, and/or institutions
Urbanism; Space and place (e.g. the built environment; sites of memory; community building)

Our symposium will be held in a hybrid format on March 22-23, 2024, with options to participate virtually or in person on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Presentations will be 15 minutes in length, followed by a question-and-answer session with faculty respondents, and a keynote lecture. The deadline for submissions (to include a title, abstract of no more than 300 words, CV, and, if necessary, supplemental visual/digital materials) is Monday, January 29th, 2024 at 11:59pm EST. Speakers will be notified in early February. Selected papers will be considered for publication in the 2025 volume of our peer-reviewed journal edited by graduate students in the Department of History of Art & Architecture.

Questions and submissions should be directed to our Graduate Student Organization President, Kale Serrato Doyen at ked126pitt.edu.