The Senses and Visual Culture from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Where does the recent sensory turn in the Arts and Humanities leave the
study of Visual Culture? Can the viewer/object model incorporate the
full sensorium without imposing ocularcentrism? How has vision's
relation to the other senses been expressed and explored through the
visual arts from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period? How have the
senses and sensory experience been represented in art before the Modern
era?

This conference will explore the complex relationship between the visual
and the sensory in contemporary theory and ancient practice. It will
investigate the ways that art, from icons to illuminated manuscripts,
music to architecture, and poetry to theatre, acted as a space for
thinking about sensory experience, and for representing sensory ideas
and theories. It will bring together scholars from a range of fields,
including Classics and Ancient History, Medieval and Byzantine Studies,
Musicology, Museum Studies and the History of Art, to explore these
questions in the context of different historical periods and cultures,
and in terms of politics, religion, philosophy, and society in the
pre-Modern era.

We invite abstracts of 300 words for papers including but not limited to
the following themes:

- The role of the visual;
- The non-visual senses and the reception of visual culture;
- Embodied interaction with apparently visual art;
- The use of ancient sensory theory in later practice;
- Representations of sensory experience;
- The difference between Eastern and Western European traditions in
terms of ideas about the senses and how they are represented;
- Displaying historical sensory experiences in museum settings;
- The future of visual culture studies of pre-modern Europe.

Papers will be 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes for discussion. The
conference will be held 8th-9th June 2015 at the University of Bristol,
UK. Please send abstracts and CVs to the organisers, Erica O'Brien and
Heather Hunter-Crawley at sensesvisualculturegmail.com, by 10th April
2015. For further information and updates, please see the conference
website: sensesandvisualculture.wordpress.com