CFP: Cold Atlantic Doctoral Seminar (Barcelona, 8-9 Sep 2016)

University of Barcelona, September 8-09, 2016
Deadline: Mar 15, 2016

Call for Papers Doctoral Seminar/Workshop Cold Atlantic. Cultural War, Dissident Artistic Practices, Networks and Contact Zones at the Time of the Iron Curtain

University of Barcelona, Spain
8-9 September 2016
(Spanish version below)

The University of Barcelona, Saint Louis University (Madrid) and the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid invite doctoral students in art history or related disciplines to participate in a doctoral seminar/workshop at the University of Barcelona (8-9 September). This academic event has been planned to coincide with an international conference at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (5-7 September) (http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/activities/cold-atlantic). Both seminar and conference are part of an international project entitled Cold Atlantic. Cultural War, Dissident Artistic Practices, Networks and Contact Zones at the Time of the Iron Curtain which has been generously funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The seminar/workshop is aimed at doctoral students working on topics related to the conference and its four thematic axes. Based on the current research of the selected participants, the seminar-workshop will serve as a platform to discuss the transatlantic exchanges between North America, Europe, Africa and Latin America bringing into the fore other hubs of artistic exchange and influence, aiming not just to de-center the (still predominant) Paris-New York axis, but also to foster a discussion that gives a voice to cultural expressions that were generated outside the official power structures. Parting from the destabilization of the status quo, with the Bandung conference in 1955 and Hungarian revolution in 1956, we aim to emphasize forms of mediation, dissidence and resistance that offered alternative responses to the ideological and aesthetic schism that dominated social, political, artistic and curatorial practices after WWII.

The seminar will be structured around the four thematic axes of the conference giving particular emphasis to methodological and theoretical questions.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE FULL POST

CFP: Seeking contributors for a book project on modernity, space and gender

Dr. Alexandra Staub is currently planning an edited volume on modernity, space and gender, using case studies from a variety of national contexts as seen through the lens of gender. She is seeking scholars who can contribute to this project by writing on how “modernity” has been shaped and defined in various cultures, how this has been used to inform public policy and spatial arrangements, and how this intersection of modernity and spatial practice has helped or hindered women. The volume would present thematically linked case studies of spatial practices and their gender implications across the globe. She would especially like to present a comparison between countries with strong social programs (such as Scandinavian countries), those with liberal or neo-liberal policies (such as the United States or Britain), rapidly developing countries (such as China or India), countries that have transitioned from a socialist economy to a capitalist one (such as Russian and other countries in Eastern Europe), and countries marked by a strong political dichotomy between modernization and traditionalism (such as Turkey or Iran) . If you are interested in contributing to this volume, or have any questions, please send an email with a short description of your work to Alexandra Staub, Associate Professor of Architecture, Penn State University.

CFP: The Aspect of Woman (Ljubljana, 26-27 May 2016)

Ljubljana, May 26 - 27, 2016
Deadline: Mar 20, 2016

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” and there were those, who became a woman long before the famous quote of Simone de Beauvoir was said out loud in 1949 and who left their footprint, seen or hidden, praised or still unrecognized. Last couple of decades have seen a radical transformation in the ways of recreation, assimilation, dispersion and reception of woman, with scholars and societies trying to rediscover her role in the visual culture through times. Critical rethinking of the complementary roles and appearances of woman – female, who refused to remain solely the other sex and appeared in the context of visual culture throughout the past century as critical and provocative subject, challenging possibilities and limitations in the world of the first sex, is the main theme of the two day conference on “The Aspect of Woman”, organised by RI19+.

The conference is an integral part of an ongoing project “Artistic Creativity of Women from the 19th Century to the Present Time” and is the first in line of the periodically scheduled events in the course of the following years, all interweaved around woman in visual culture throughout the past and present times and intense aims to evaluate and analyse their contributions in wider European space.

For the conference, hosted by Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana (Zavod Bunker), the organizer RI19+ welcomes proposals that might include, yet are not limited solely to the following topics:

• current status of studies, questions and themes discussing women in visual culture;
• current researches concerning active roles of women in visual culture: artists, art critics, architects, designers, conservators, restorers, costume designers, theoreticians, patrons of art, curators, collectors, professors of visual culture;
• new appearances of women in visual culture;
• reflections of sexuality and gender in popular culture from women’s perspective;
• the reception of images done by women artists;
• women‘s power and its acceptance in visual culture.

Particularly welcomed are submissions seeking to analyse the role of women in Central and Southern European artistic space and accentuating transnational connections throughout history.

RI19+ welcomes proposals from artists as well as scholars from across the disciplines (art history, architecture, design, philosophy, history, etc.), and from outside the academy as well as within.

Proposals for papers, limited to 300 words, and short CV, limited to 100 words, should be sent to the organizer RI19+ at Natasha Ivanovic by 20th March 2016.

Rijeka, Croatia, June 2 - 04, 2016
Deadline: Mar 30, 2016
http://ikon.ffri.hr

Marian Iconography East and West
Tenth International Conference of Iconographic Studies

Center for Iconographic Studies - University of Rijeka (Croatia) in collaboration with
Study of Theology in Rijeka, University of Zagreb (Croatia)
University of Thessaly (Greece)
University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Gregorian Pontifical University Rome (Italy)

The conference seeks to explore and discuss recent development in the dialogue between theology, art history, philosophy and cultural theory concerning the iconography of Mary in Eastern and Western art. We welcome academic papers that will approach this subject in an interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse way. The themes and subjects can include the following:

• early representations of Mary
• images of intercession and authority
• devotional iconography
• Mary Mother of God
• Virgin as queen
• Mary as Ecclesia
• Mary and Eve
• Life of the Virgin
• post-Tridentine iconography
• hermeneutical and phenomenological aspects of Mary

Paper proposals should be submitted electronically to cis@ffri.hr

A paper proposal should contain:

1. full name, institution, affiliation, address, phone number(s), e-mail address
2. title
3. abstract (maximum 2 pages – 500 words)

Invitations to participate will be sent out by email before April 15, 2016

There is NO registration fee

Administration and organizational costs, working materials, lunch and coffee breaks during conference as well as all organized visits are covered by the organizers. All presented papers will be published in the thematic issue of the IKON journal in May 2017.

Please contact us for any additional information.

Contact person: Sanja Jovanović Center for Iconographic Studies Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Rijeka Sveucilisna avenija 4 51 000 Rijeka Croatia E-mail: cis@ffri.hr

Tallinn, October 28 - 29, 2016 Deadline: Feb 25, 2016

Art History and Socialism(s) after World War II: The 1940s until the 1960s

Location: Institute of Art History, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn
Hosting institution: Estonian Academy of Arts

Although the Soviet and Eastern European socialist regimes of the latter 20th century seem to lie in the distant past now, research on them still has many uncovered areas. This applies not least to the role of “socialist” art historians, their activities and functions in universities, exhibitions and the mass media, and especially their academic text production. Deriving from a complicated socio-cultural set of relations, the common denominator for which was “socialism”, these art historical “acts” shaped the general comprehensions of art, culture and history in the society at large. With the overall historiographical turn in the humanities, scholars from the Baltic to the Balkan region have begun to re-address the various histories of artworks, architecture, artistic styles and whole epochs that these practices constructed. Conferences on this recent art historical past have been held and scholarly publications issued, including in English, today’s lingua franca, but the vast majority of research remains only in native languages, thus circulating mainly at the local level.

Our call for papers originates from the conviction that researchers of socialist art history need a common platform, to introduce and compare art historical practices across the former Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Europe. Paraphrasing the late Piotr Piotrowski, the time is ripe for the project of a “horizontal” reading of socialist art history. As with different “socialisms”, “socialist art history” as an umbrella term covers a variety of ways of writing the history of art and architecture. Moscow’s influence varied greatly depending on the decade, region and particular situation. In addition to ideological pressure and terror, other factors – of which neighbours might not have been or still might not be aware – affected the art historical ideas and practices of different Soviet republics and the satellite states in Eastern and Central Europe. The making of art history and its visual displays by means of exhibitions (as well as contemporary artistic practices) also depended on the international art history discourse, even though the range and accessibility of literature etc. varied from country to country.

The conference addresses these topics primarily via the historiographical and theoretical levels:

• Moscow’s role in developing the theoretical grounds of the Marxist-Leninist art history discourse (one centre?, unity of theoretical approaches?)
• implementing this discourse in the Soviet Union, in its new member republics and in the new “socialist countries” (national socialist schools of art history?)
• interpreting art historical concepts and periodisation; shifts occurring over time; comparison with the Western art history discourse(s);
• the complicated relationship with Modernism during the Stalinist era; its later inclusion in the Marxist-Leninist discourse of art history.

FOR COMPLETE DETAILS, SEE FULL POST

Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas (GWZO), Universität Leipzig, November 10 - 11, 2016
Deadline: March 31, 2016

Denkmalschutz im Baltikum – Probleme, Potentiale, politische Bedeutung

Tagung der Böckler-Mare-Balticum-Stiftung und des Geisteswissenschaftlichen Zentrums Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas an der Universität Leipzig (GWZO), 10.-11. November 2016 (= Homburger Gespräch 2016)

FOR DESCRIPTION, SEE FULL POST

As part of the Fourth Euroacademia International Conference ‘Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities’, Venice, Italy, 4 - 5 March 2016 Cultural Centre – Don Orione Artigianelli, Venice, Italy, March 4 - 5, 2016 Deadline: Jan 15, 2016

Call for Papers for the Panel: Identities and the Cities: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction

Panel Description:

Elasticity of the label identity accommodates everything that does and does not surround us, thus finding its place in every discourse on making and re-making, invention and re-invention, destruction and construction. Every transition is synonymous with said processes, be it a tectonic change or a peaceful shift. As political systems and countries disintegrate and new ones rise, as they become more entangled in the global hyperspace, their skin changes in a manner of theatrical scenery change after each act, sometimes with discrete adaptation, sometimes with radical interventions. If the scenery is composed of streets, parks, roads, museums, monuments, shopping malls and buildings connected through the intricate network of the perpetual and cumulative actions of its inhabitants and the burden of their existence, if this setting is a city, every adaptation and intervention affects its multi-dimensional identities. However, can one speak of an identity of the urban space in the singular form?

As the chaotic canvases of cities are being stretched over a framework of identity, its further exploration seems more than appropriate. Amidst the incredibly rapid urban growth crowding more than half of the world population in towns and cities, the questions are only going to keep multiplying. How are city identities made and re-made, used and abused, imagined and narrated, politicized and communicated, expressed and projected, imposed and marketed? And above all, how do they thrive within the dynamic interpolation of the nexus of East-West, Europe-Balkans, center-periphery, urban - suburban, old and new. As outdated as these dichotomies sound, in many places their daily life is far from over. As old cities became new capitals and new capitals struggle for more capital, the challenges of maintaining state-driven collective identities in the face of cultural fragmentation and diversification, coupled with consumer-attractiveness is turning them into urban palimpsest. This transformation is ever more complex in the cities of Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe. In these last decades, during the period of socio-political and cultural deconstruction, the redefinitions of their urban space reflect the need to refashion, consolidate or even establish their new/old identities. Flooded with imported ‘non-places’, (not) dealing with the material legacy of memories of the recent past that seem unable to resolve, trying to accept or reject the rest of Europe in the race towards ‘Europeanization’, these cities adopt different approaches in their aim to resemble and at the same time, differ. Zagreb generously welcomed its marketing nickname “pocket size Vienna”, while regenerating itself with the mega Museum of Contemporary Art tailored up to an imagined ‘Western European’ standard. Skopje’s attention seeking project transformed the ‘open city of solidarity’ into a literal national identity construction site. The list goes on. Queuing to win the old continent’s capital of culture contest and eager to squeeze into the ever-enlarging itinerary of the consumerist Grand Tour, the only thing cities are not allowed to be, is invisible.

As the research on cultural identities of the city is becoming more abundant, this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while focusing on various transitional processes affecting identities in the urban context in its global-regional-national-local interplay.

FOR THE COMPLETE LIST OF RELEVANT TOPICS AND APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS, SEE FULL POST

Posted in: Academic, Art, Russian art-Dec 02, 2015Comments Off on CFP: Forgotten Geographies in the Fin de Siècle, 1880-1920
Birkbeck College, London
8 – 9 July, 2016
https://forgottengeographies.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Professor Regenia Gagnier (University of Exeter)
Dr Olga Kirillova (National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Kyiv)
Dr Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College, University of Oxford)

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in fin-de-siècle cultural studies and, in particular, in the growth of cosmopolitanism and internationalism in Europe during the 1880s and 1890s. This critical reception has tended to read British fin-de-siècle culture as a reflection of and reaction to specific European countries, mainly France. The wealth and variety of imperial and industrial Britain’s cross-cultural exchanges, however, has not been generally considered as a whole. British artists and writers of the 1880s and 1890s were avid travellers and readers who came in contact with a vast range of European cultures – Belgian, Bohemian, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish… As a way of escaping industrialisation and cultural homogenisation, or as a consequence of imperial politics, many artists and writers also interacted with further cultures, such as Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Moroccan, and Turkish, to name but a few. British authors of the fin de siècle were undeniably influenced by French writing, but also by Scandinavian naturalists like Ibsen and Hamsun, and by the newly translated fiction of Turgenev and Tolstoy. Likewise, the impact and response to British art and literature in the international cultural community has yet to be explored. Anglomania was a distinct tendency among aesthetes in turn-of-the-century Hungary, Russia, Austria, Ukraine, and Poland, to name but a few. The promotion of British aestheticism was often seen by the locals as a step to modernisation and advancement of national artistic and literary tradition. English magazines, which facilitated revolutionary changes in publishing, design, and international networking, e.g. The Studio, The Yellow Book, The Savoy, were set as examples for the emerging culture of periodicals in Eastern Europe. The late Pre-Raphaelite movement, especially works and ideas of Burne-Jones and Watts, was also a powerful yet underappreciated influence on the development of Symbolism in Polish visual culture. As recent research questions the cultural segregation between East and West, challenging post-colonial assumptions about imperial hierarchy, and instead emphasising global networks of reciprocity, it is the intention of this conference to further expand this debate. By bringing together established and emerging scholars, we aim to reconsider the intellectual and national foundations of the British fin de siècle, assessing the role of other ‘forgotten’ cultures in the articulation of British cultural movements of the time. At the same time, we intend to unlock and reframe the perception of British authors abroad by explicating the reinvention of meaning of their work in different cultural, social, and political environments.

We invite proposals for 20 minute papers on topics related to forgotten geographies in the fin de siècle, which may include, but are not limited to:

• Dialectic between the cosmopolitan and the local/national
• Non-traditional European identities
• Non-European collaborative links of British cultural producers
• Portrayals of difference in cosmopolitan literature and art
• Cosmopolitan practices (travelling, translation, hospitality)
• Modern cities as centres of transnational cultural exchange
• Literary and artistic networks of the turn of the century
• Fin-de-siècle cultural imperialism, aesthetic Orientalism
• Mass culture and popularization of aestheticism

Please email 300-word abstracts to forgottengeographies@gmail.com by 20 December 2015.

http://www.hunghist.org/index.php/call-for-articles/313-call-for-journal

Call for Publications The Hungarian Historical Review invites submissions for its fourth issue in 2016, the theme of which will be “1956, Resistance and Cultural Opposition in East Central Europe.” The deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 15, 2016.

Since 1989, former socialist countries have been in the process of constructing and negotiating their relationships with their recent past, which includes their stories of resistance, revolts and cultural opposition. Opposition is typically understood in a narrow sense as referring to open political resistance to communist governments. We propose a more nuanced historical conception of resistance, opposition and revolts, expanding the concept towards broader frameworks of political participation in order to facilitate a better understanding of how dissent and criticism were possible in the former socialist regimes of Eastern Europe.

Since the authorities tried to control public spheres and there were no opportunities for democratic public debates, several critical movements (democratic, Church related or nationalist opposition) decided to establish underground public spheres and declared open opposition to the socialist state. However, several cultural groups with no open political program (e. g. avant-garde art, alternative religious communities, youth culture) were also regarded as forms of opposition and branded as such by the authorities, and, as a result, they were also forced underground.

Possible topics include:

• Individuals, institutions, groups and networks of cultural opposition;
• New perspectives of revolts (1956, 1968, 1981) against the Communist regimes;
• Members of the “hard-core” democratic opposition, who were banned during the socialist period (including the world of samizdat publications, art movements, and non-official lectures);
• Activities and networks of elite and intellectual groups of the opposition;
• Radical and experimental theatre;
• Underground and non-conformist youth and popular culture;
• Religious groups and institutions and their roles in the opposition;
• Cultural and scientific institutions, which implemented the research agenda of the opposition (e.g. research on poverty in the communist regimes).

We invite the submission of abstracts on the questions and topics raised above.

We provide proofreading for contributors who are not native speakers of English.

Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short biographical sketch with a selected list of the author’s five most important publications (we do not accept full CVs). Proposals should be submitted by email to hunghist@btk.mta.hu

The editors will ask the authors of selected papers (max. 10 000 words) to submit their final articles no later than June 16, 2016. The articles will be published after a peer-review process.

All articles must conform to our submission guidelines: http://hunghist.org/index.php/for-authors.

The Hungarian Historical Review is a peer-reviewed international journal of the social sciences and humanities the geographical focus of which is Hungary and East-Central Europe.

For additional information, including submission guidelines, please visit the journal’s website

The Hungarian Historical Review is published quarterly by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of History, 30 Országház utca, Budapest H – 1014, Hungary

In a 2001 issue of the journal PMLA, David Chioni Moore asked: “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?”Answers to this important question have come in many forms during the last fifteen years, and the tentative equation between the two has also been significantly extended: post-Soviet and postcolonial are routinely lumped together with postmodernist, and post-totalitarian; just as the “soviet” has with the “colonial.” Yet these “posts” did not sit comfortably together; their apparent family resemblance has not yet merged into a productive and convincing framework either for analyzing socialism as a form of colonial practice or for understanding post-soviet as post-colonial.

We welcome historically grounded and ethnographically engaged submissions from scholars interested in analyzing the postcolonial transfiguration of the communist past. Please send your abstract (300 words) and a short CV (up to 2 pages) to Serguei Oushakine, the Chair of the Program Committee at princeton.conjunction2016@gmail.com by January 20, 2016.

Those selected to give presentations at the conference will be contacted in early February 2016. Final papers will be due no later than April 15, and they will be posted on the conference website. Pending funding, subsidies for graduate students and participants from the overseas may be available.