[1] Raphael in Paper: The Material Reception of Raphael through Drawings, Prints, and Manuscripts

From: Maria Gabriella Matarazzo and Elisa Spataro
Date: 3 Jul 26

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

This panel explores how Raphael was perceived, studied, collected, and historicized through the medium of paper.
Despite its ephemeral nature, paper – in the form of drawings, prints, notebooks, publishing, and correspondence – played a crucial role in the circulation of Raphael’s inventions and in fostering a critical discourse on his art and legacy. This process began under Raphael’s own supervision within the multimedia workshop he directed in Rome from the 1510s, and continued throughout the early modern period, developing in branching, complex, and often unexpected directions that this panel seeks to map out.
In recent decades, Raphael’s reception from the sixteenth to the twentieth century has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention. Equally significant has been the growing body of research devoted to the circulation of his inventions through prints – especially Marcantonio Raimondi’s engravings – which culminated in a "Marcantonio moment" (Grantham Turner, 2018). By bringing these studies into dialogue while considering all forms of paper media, the panel will explore how the material circulation of Raphael’s work on paper and through paper contributed to the construction of the myth of his “divine” persona well beyond Italy and across the early modern world.
The papers in this panel will address this question through three main lines of inquiry:
- First, they will examine the emergence of repertories of Raphael’s opera omnia through prints and drawings, at a time when the growth of collecting and the art market increasingly removed his paintings and altarpieces from their original contexts;
- Second, they will explore how such paper repositories of Raphael’s inventions became pedagogical tools, shaping a model of artistic education that was soon adopted by academies across Europe and beyond, often promoting a ‘classicist’ style that was not without political implications and was often motivated by an attempt to impose cultural dominance, particularly outside of Europe;
- Third, they will investigate how the collection and scholarly engagement with Raphael’s oeuvre fostered the emergence of a critical discourse articulated through publications and correspondence, shaping new terminology, new critical categories, and, ultimately, Art Literature itself.

We are seeking proposals that engage with these themes and foster cross-cultural understanding of Raphael’s reception. We particularly encourage papers that examine Raphael’s reception outside of Europe, focusing on its global trajectories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Please send submissions with a title (15-word maximum) and an abstract (200-word maximum); a 2-page CV; your PhD completion year (past or expected); and your full name, current affiliation, and email address to Maria Gabriella Matarazzo (m.matarazzozikg.eu) and Elisa Spataro (elisa.spatarouniroma1.it) by July 31, 2026. Decisions will be communicated by August 5, 2026.

Participants must be members of both the RSA and the IAS at the time of submission (August 15, 2026), and at the time of the conference (March 11-13, 2026), if selected.

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[2] Transmedia, Transmaterials, Translations

From: Saygin Salgirli
Date: 4 Jul 26

Renaissance Society of America Islamic World Discipline invites abstracts for three panels to be held at the 2027 RSA Conference in Philadelphia, on March 11-13.

Structured under the umbrella title “Transmedia, Transmaterials, Translations,” the three panels are going to explore the mobility of media, materials, and texts within the Islamic World, and between the Islamic World and other geographies. Rather than the transfer of objects, artworks, and texts from one locale to another, we are interested in papers that explore movements from one medium to another (painting to print and vice versa), from one material to another (textiles to mosaics and vice versa), and from one language to another. The purpose of the three panels is to switch the focus from transregional connections and cultural exchange to varied practices of localization; to how, whatever that travelled was reworked, and made familiar and intelligible. Papers specifically on such localization practices within the Islamic World, as well as those investigating how media, materials, and texts from the Islamic World were localized elsewhere are welcome to apply.
Although there will be obvious overlaps, each panel is going to be dedicated to one theme: media, materials, and texts. In that regard, please submit your abstracts by indicating whichever theme suits your paper best.

Please submit the following materials: Paper title (maximum 15 words); Abstract (maximum 200 words); Short CV (PDF or Word format, and including the date that PhD was awarded, or the expected date).

Please send your proposal to Saygin Salgirli at saygin.salgirliubc.ca by 05 August 2026.

I look forward to receiving your submissions. 

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[3] Roundtable: Material Histories of Early Modernity as Interdisciplinary Praxis

From: Wenyi Qian
Date: 7 Jul 26

This roundtable panel takes stock of the material turn within the humanities to reassess the practice of material history of the early modern world. Poised at the intersection of an increasingly vibrant and conceptually heterogeneous set of disciplinary perspectives and methods (including but not limited to art history, archaeology, and material culture studies, economic, social and legal history, the environmental humanities, and the history of science, knowledge, and medicine), material history has the potential to propose novel interdisciplinary configurations unbounded by the more conventional and once dominant format of the biography of commodities, materials, and objects. Its privileged relation to issues of extraction, commerce, collecting and circulation also allows material history to offer a distinct vantage point onto critical approaches to early modern globality.

This roundtable calls for short-format case studies (10 mins) that pivot around a circumscribed set of material, visual, and textual evidences (which could be an object, an artwork, a site, a legal case, a literary text, or an archival document) to constellate unusual interdisciplinary combinations and offer original narrative of the early modern world. We particularly welcome papers that combine disciplines with a more stable relation to material history and critical, theoretical and experimental approaches (including gender and sexuality, premodern critical race studies, critical theories of the archive, issues of empire, coloniality and indigeneity, reconstruction and reenactment practices among others). Papers that take a material history approach to assess transcultural and transregional dynamics within the early modern world are particularly welcome. We will prioritize convening an interdisciplinary group of early modernists from the respective disciplines of history, art history, literature, history of science among others with no geographic restrictions.

Please submit an abstract (200 words max) and a bio (150 words max), including full name, institutional affiliation, and email address, to Sama Mammadova (smammadovafas.harvard.edu) and Wenyi Qian (wenyi.qianmail.utoronto.ca) by July 25, 2026. We will notify selected speakers by July 31.

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[4] New Research Perspectives on Confraternity Studies: Collective Agency, Space and Materiality

From: Joana Pinho
Date: 7 Jul 26

The Society for Confraternity Studies will sponsor a number of sessions at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (11-13 March 2027) in Philadelphia, US. Accordingly, it invites proposals for papers on the following theme:

New Research Perspectives on Confraternity Studies: Collective Agency, Space and Materiality

Recent scholarship has significantly expanded our understanding of confraternities as key actors in the religious, social, cultural, and political life of the early modern period. This session welcomes
papers that further advance the field’s state of the art by exploring the multifaceted nature of confraternities. Particular attention will be given to the collective agency expressed through charitable activities, devotional practices, artistic commissioning and interinstitutional relations. We are interested in contributions that explore the material and spatial dimensions of confraternal life, as well as examine how confraternities functioned as intermediaries between religious, civic, and social spheres, and how they interacted with other institutions and associations. Comparative, connected, and transregional perspectives across different geographical, cultural and confessional contexts are
welcome.

Papers might focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Devotional objects, artistic patronage, visual representations, architecture, and other forms of material culture associated with confraternities;
- Spaces and places of interactions and sociability;
- The urban and rural dimension of confraternal life;
- Women’s participation, agency and leadership within confraternal contexts;
- Institutional networks, relationships between confraternities and churches, neighbourhoods, religious orders, civic institutions, and other associations;
- Conflict, collaboration, and exchange among confraternities.

By bringing together scholars working across different regions, disciplines and methodological approaches, this session aims to foster new perspectives on confraternities as agentic communities
whose social, material, and spatial practices played a crucial role in shaping early modern societies.

Proposals should include presenter’s name, academic affiliation, email, paper title (15-word maximum), paper abstract (200-word maximum); a brief academic CV (maximum 2 pages); and
relevant keywords. Please be sure all categories of information are clearly provided.
Please submit your proposals to Dr Giulia Zanon and Dr Joana Balsa de Pinho at giulia.zanonunivr.it and joanabalsapinhogmail.com by 24 July 2026.

Accepted participants will be notified no later than 31 July 2026.