[1] Empire in the Americas, 1300-1700: Art, Vision, Race, and Power.

From: Kristi Peterson, kpeters4skidmore.edu.
Date: July 22, 2024.
Deadline: August 1, 2024.

When discussing the Western hemisphere and its imperial relationships, a handful of national identities typically dominate the conversation and thereby reduce the continents’ complexities. In truth, the imposition of empires and their legacies is a complex tapestry of hybridity, synthesis, and negotiations that rarely remain stable in their semiotics. European colonizations of the hemisphere also do not represent the earliest American empires, and the conversation often ignores Indigenous responses and negotiations of changing power structures informed by their own histories and placemaking narratives. As both markers and makers of emic social systems, visual and material culture both reflect and sustain, fulfill and negotiate, imperial impositions and systems.

This session is specifically interested in exploring and complicating this concept via the artistic production of the American hemisphere and its relationship to, and intersection with, the construction, maintenance, and transformations of vision and imperial structures, circa 1300-1700. This session seeks papers that examine the questions of the intersection of art making and empires in the Americas across time and national boundaries that impact our understanding of this period of time in the hemisphere and its legacies. We welcome submissions that examine issues related to vision, race, and power structures broadly defined. This includes, but is not limited to: indigenous responses and negotiations of empires, the mechanisms by which empires are built and maintained, how both local and imperial identities are negotiated through artmaking, and how visual culture is used to aid, negotiate, and even undermine/subvert imperial imposition.

Organizers: Kristi Peterson (Skidmore College) & Emily Thames (Independent Scholar).

We invite proposals for papers of no more than 200 words until Thursday, August 1. Please send with your proposal the following information to both Kristi M. Peterson (kpeters4skidmore.edu) and Emily K. Thames (ekthamesgmail.com):

- Full name, current affiliation, and email address
- Discipline area
- Paper title (15-word maximum)
- Abstract text (200-word maximum)
- Curriculum vitae, no more than two pages (.pdf or .doc format)
- PhD completion date (past or expected).

The organizers will notify applicants of their status as soon as possible following the submission deadline. Those accepted will need to confirm and join RSA if they are not already members.

Please note that the conference is in-person and that all participants are required to be members of RSA at the time of the conference. Any questions may be directed to the emails listed above.

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[2] Cultures of Air in the Premodern World: Visual and Material Perspectives.

From: Rebecca Bowen, rebecca.bowenkhi.fi.it.
Date: July 25, 2024.
Deadline: August 12, 2024.

The new research series, Cultures of Air in the Premodern World invites paper proposals for a panel on visual and material representations of the air to be held at the RSA Boston 2025. As the basis for the very conditions of life on earth, the air has been managed, harnessed, conceived of, and addressed across geographies and cultures, in relation to crises as well as in times of sustainability; it has accrued spiritual and religious dimensions, stimulated specific technologies, been the focus of medical practices and philosophical speculation, and generated iconospheres that reach across visual, material, and literary production. Seeking to investigate changes and adaptations in the knowledge of the air from the perspective of visual and material culture, this panel invites proposals for 20-minute papers focused on specific case studies from any geographical location that demonstrate an engagement with:

- scientific, philosophical or theological conceptions of the air;
- technologies of the air;
- animals of the air (real or imagined);
- air and architecture;
- air and civic practice.

Like the air itself, the panel is open to global perspectives. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome although papers should focus on specific case-studies drawn from visual or material culture, with the aim of stimulating broad conversation grounded in an examination of sources.

To apply for participation, please send a single pdf file including a short abstract outlining your area of contribution (max 250 words) and an academic bio (max 300 words) that explains your scholarly background and the relevance of your research interests to the panel by Monday 12th August, 2024.

To submit an application please email rosemary.byfleetmonash.edu or rebecca.bowenkhi.fi.it by Monday 12th August, 2024.