Call for Papers

Submission Deadline: December 17, 2012, 5 p.m.

Historiographies of New Media

The Chicago Art Journal, the annual publication of the University of
Chicago Department of Art History, is seeking submissions of original
work by graduate students and faculty. The 2012-2013 edition asks how
new media have affected not only the production of art, but also the
production of knowledge about art. What is at stake in approaching art
history through the concept of new media?

Particularly in the post WWII period, the term “new media” has been
applied to a range of formats—from photography, to video, to the
Internet—that have revolutionized the modes of transmission and
reproduction of “old” media of art. The concept of new media seems to
promise a mass media address, yet artists have often emphasized the
limits of circulation—for instance, in closed-circuit television, or
in zines that were produced via Xerox processes and yet distributed to
small networks. Such a dialectical relation escapes media theory’s
emphasis on mass distribution and gestures instead toward sites of
friction between the imaginative and material aspects of new media,
which the discipline of art history may be particularly well-equipped
to explore.

Furthermore, the formation and performance of art history has been
contingent upon pivotal introductions of reproductive media, from the
double-slide lecture to the publication of photographs in books, from
the use of facsimiles in the classroom to broadcasts of “art on
television.” In turning with fresh eyes to the idea of new media, we
consider art history’s rhetorics of description and display. How might
we effectively attend to the aesthetic and pedagogical aspects of new
media in the wake of communications theory and concepts such as
interactivity?

Just as recent scholarship has addressed the nuances of “pre-modern”
and modern notions of mediality—including forms of mechanical
reproducibility and audiovisual displays emergent in the Middle
Ages—so might we aim to reframe more contemporary art historical
categories of “lateness” such as the post-medium condition.

We are especially interested in papers that diverge from the
well-known chronologies of Euro-American technological developments.

Topics might include but are not limited to:
- the performance and circulation of art history through facsimiles,
photographs, slide projections
- responses and counter-responses to new media technologies within art
criticism, critical theory, and film theory
- historical modes of mechanical reproduction, such as imprinting
coins, technologies of the book, and seals
- transfers and transformations among media
- media as reference for other media
- the materiality of new media, and material processes
- new media and abstraction
- painting after the advent of network theory
- the aesthetics of television
- queer aesthetics and new media
- analog and digital in art and art history
- historiographies of “video art,” including the role of projection
- the wider implications of artists’ practices in Xerox, zines,
artists’ books, flip books, and holograms
- the dialectics of art transmitted through media and art as media
- new media’s relevance for reframing art historical cycles and
geographies of innovation

Submissions:
Papers must follow The Chicago Manual of Style and should not exceed
5000 words. Each submission should include an abstract of
approximately 500 words. Both Word documents and PDFs are acceptable.

All contributors should include their name, address, telephone number,
and email address.

Authors are responsible for securing image reproduction rights and
associated fees.

Please send submissions to the graduate student editor Solveig Nelson
at UChicagoArtJournalgmail.com by December 17, 2012, 5 p.m.