Call for Papers

Agency of Things:
New Perspectives on European Art of the Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries

CONFERENCE
11–12 June 2015
Co-organized by Institute of History of Art, University of Warsaw and
National Museum in Warsaw

Invited speakers:
Prof. Susie Nash (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
Prof. Andrew Morrall (The Bard Graduate Center, New York)
Prof. Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)
Prof. Wim François (KU Leuven)
Prof. Elina Gertsman (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland)
Prof. Jacqueline E. Jung (Yale University)
Dr. Peter Dent (University of Bristol)
Dr. Robert Maniura (Birbeck, University of London)
Dr. Kathryn Rudy (University of St Andrews)

This two-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to investigate whether
agency of things as a new research model more accurately than
traditional theories and methods informs our understanding of religious,
social, political and ideological systems or networks which shaped
various communities (court, city, convent, pilgrim) during the period
under investigation.

All speakers will be invited to visit the newly reopened Gallery of
Medieval Art at the National Museum in Warsaw with its curator Professor
Antoni Ziemba.

We invite proposals from a variety of disciplines and perspectives,
provided that they present innovative insights into the realm of agency
of artistic and non-artistic objects. Acceptable topics may include, but
are by no means limited to, the following topics:

- Scale and size of things as conditions of their agency
- Physical and sensory agency of things
- Animated things and things for manual handling
- Objects actively defining and operating within a space
- Things used in performances, rituals, recitations and sermons
- Craftsmanship and its role in agency of things
- Human subjects in a process of dissemination of objects
- Emotional and psychological agency of things

Papers should be twenty minutes in length and will be followed by a
ten-minute Q&A session.

Please e-mail an abstract of no more than 300 words to Ika
Matyjaszkiewicz and Patrycja Misiuda-Ramlau to agencyofthingsuw.edu.pl
by 30 November 2014. Along with your abstract please include your name,
institution, paper title and a brief biography of no more than 150
words. Successful applicants will be notified by 30 January 2015. The
conference proceedings will be published after the event, therefore
please indicate whether you would be interested in further developing
your paper for a publication.

For further information please visit our website:
www.agencyofthings.uw.edu.pl