Category: call for participation

CFP: “The Gustatory Turn”

Call for Papers: The Gustatory Turn in American Art
AHAA sponsored session at CAA
February 15-18, 2017, New York

Co-chairs: Guy Jordan, Western Kentucky University and Shana Klein, National Museum of American History

The rapid emergence of food studies programs, food studies journals, and museum exhibitions devoted to food reveals how the role of taste and digestion in American art has become a vibrant topic of study. This session examines the relationships between ocular and gastronomic delectation and visual consumption in paintings, prints, cookbooks, dietary manuals, and other forms of media that represent food and drink. This panel specifically invites papers that consider how artists used formal techniques to elicit pleasure or disgust in images of food and drink and how viewers responded to the sweet or unsavory qualities of an image. Paper proposals might also consider how images of food and drink interact with the social conventions of eating, dining, and consuming in their respective time periods. Proposals that evaluate the mechanics of taste and the ways in which these mechanics engage with political life and discourses of identity (i.e. race, class, and gender) are also welcome. The goal of this panel is to showcase scholarship that complements and advances the gustatory turn in American art.

Please send a one-page abstract and short c.v. by Monday, April 4 to Guy Jordan (guydjordan@gmail.com) and Shana Klein (Shana.Klein@gmail.com).

FEL: Curatorial Fellowship–Postcolonial, sexuality & race studies

Fellowship Deadline Today (Feb. 15, 2016) for Applications for a Curatorial Fellowship for Postcolonial Perspectives on LBTIQ-Heritages

Within the framework of the ‚International Museum Fellowship’ program run by the German Federal Culture Foundation, the Gay Museum will announce a fellowship on April 1st, 2016.
With its highly regarded exhibitions, archival holdings, numerous contributions to research and more than thirty-five (mostly volunteer) staff, the Schwules Museum* has, since its founding in 1985, grown into one of the world’s largest and most significant institutions for archiving, researching and communicating the history and culture of LGBTIQ communities. Different exhibitions and events have taken diverse approaches to lesbian, gay, trans*, bi- and intersexual and queer biographies, themes and concepts in history, art and culture.
In over 150 special exhibitions shown over the past 30 years, the museum has presented a broad spectrum of perspectives on the history of homosexual cultures. Being over 500m2, the museum has at its disposal one of the largest archives in the world, which includes more than 1000 metres of archive material (files, newspaper cut outs, videos, posters, photographs, paintings, sculptures and so on). Within the framework of the project, specially chosen items from the archives and selected exhibition projects should undergo a critical examination. Using an intersectional perspective, the ways in which European colonialism was interwoven with cultural discourses of homosexual emancipation should be examined. Questions should be posed regarding the ways in which exhibition practices and collection strategies engage in critical self-reflection.
The results will be presented in an exhibition or as an intervention in the new permanent exhibition which is currently being planned. This presentation will be part of a program which places particular value on participative practices. The proposal is directed at academics and curators from outside of Germany with the following profile:
– A completed degree in cultural studies or a related field.
– In-depth knowledge of Gender Studies/ Queer Theory/ Postcolonial Studies/ Critical Whiteness Studies.
– Experience in archive-based research.
– Curatorial experience, particularly in the area of cultural history.
– Knowledge of Microsoft Office, including (archival) data base programs.
– Languages: Written and spoken English, German to C1 level.
The Fellowship involves full-time work (100%) for a duration of 18 months, remuneration is based on TV-L 13/1, and work will be based in Berlin.

Please send your application including all your details as a single document, maximum 5 MB with your name included in the heading (your name.pdf) before February, 15th, 2016 to: jobs@schwulesmuseum.de.Schwules Museum website

The Art of Change: Conversations with Ford Foundation Fellows–Live Webcast, Fri., Jan. 15, 2016, 9am-5pm Eastern Time

Please join us for a live webcast of “The Artists of Change,” a daylong forum with our Art of Change Fellows—13 creative visionaries working at the forefront of art and social change. Over the course of the year, the Fellows have pursued independent projects on critical issues such as surveillance, climate change, drug policy and capitalism, soft power, diversity in the arts, social networks, and the power of technology. Tune in as they share their work and spark lively conversation—with the audience and each other—around the ideas they are exploring.

To watch the live webcast, visit artofchange.is.
Join the conversation: #ArtofChange

See The Art of Change Webcam 2016

Join the conversation with Eungie Joo, Thelma Golden, Carrie Mae Weems, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, and others.

 

 

 

 

 

CFP on Creolization and Trans-Atlantic Black Identities

See: Callfor Papers Creolization and Trans Atlantic Blackness: The Visual and Material Cultures of Slavery

CFP: Zones of Representation

Call for Papers:

“Zones of Representation: Photographing Contested Landscapes, Contemporary West Coast Perspectives on Photography and Photograph-Based Media,” a symposium organized by Makeda Best (California College of the Arts), Bridget Gilman (Santa Clara University), and Kathy Zarur (California College of the Arts), at SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA, April 23, 2016
Contemporary global events and phenomena continue to shape visual interpretations of economic, social, environmental, and political geographies, and to disrupt conceptions of region, nation, citizenship, and community.

“Zones of Representation” will consider how photographers and time-based media artists have responded to transformations in the global landscape through new ideas about the function of photographic media, and the shifting roles of makers and audiences. We want to know: how can novel visual practices disrupt traditional narratives of spatial representation? In what unique ways do artists in time-based media acknowledge and respond to the historical contribution of their medium in defining, producing, and perpetuating these same narratives? What new connections do these practices demonstrate and reveal? And, in what ways do contemporary technologies, modes of distribution, and access impact interactions with the land?
We invite papers that address the expanded role of photography and time-based media in global landscape discourses and social fabrics.

Proposals on contemporary topics or new perspectives on historic materials are encouraged. Proposals from image makers are also welcome.

Please send a 300-word proposal, a one-paragraph biographical statement, and full contact information tozonesofrepresentation@gmail.com by January 8, 2016.
“Zones of Representation” aims to connect artists, historians, curators and arts professionals, and students in Northern California, facilitating a regional network for the latest art historical scholarship. The symposium is presented in collaboration with SF Camerawork and is co-sponsored by the Northern California Art Historians (NCAH), a College Art Association affiliated society.

 

 

CFP: Art, Race, and Christianity @ CAA 2016

Call for Papers: Art, Race, and Christianity
Affiliated Society: Association for Critical Race Art History
Phoebe Wolfskill, Indiana University, pwolfski@indiana.edu and James Romaine, Nyack College, drjamesromaine@gmail.com
College Art Association Annual Conference, February 3-6, 2016, Washington, DC

Session Description: Since its arrival in the Americas, Christianity has been inextricably linked to issues of racial identity. The religious foundations of the European immigrants who colonized the New World diverged from the practices of indigenous and uprooted African populations, often resulting in a conflict of spiritual identities, a struggle that frequently found its place in artistic expression. This panel seeks papers focusing on the relationship between race and faith in North American and Caribbean art created from the nineteenth century to the present. How does art function as a site in which intersecting racial and religious tensions have been expressed, debated, or potentially resolved? How does an artist (or community of artists) negotiate an identity that is situated between or within racial and religious identities? In what ways does racial identity or racial difference influence depictions of Christian subjects and themes? What specific contexts allowed for or required the negotiation of racial identity and Christian subjects? We welcome broad conceptions of race and a range of media for exploration.

Session participants must be a member of CAA.

Every proposal should include the following five items:
1. Completed session participation proposal form, located at the end of the pdf http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/2016CallforParticipation.pdf or an email with this information.
2. Preliminary abstract of one to two double-spaced, typed pages.
3. Letter explaining speaker’s interest, expertise in the topic, and CAA membership status.
4. CV with home and office mailing addresses, email address, and phone and fax numbers. Include summer address and telephone number, if applicable.
5. Documentation of work when appropriate, especially for sessions in which artists might discuss their own work.

Please send proposals to:
Phoebe Wolfskill, Indiana University, pwolfski@indiana.edu and James Romaine, Nyack College, drjamesromaine@gmail.com

DEADLINE: May 8, 2015

CFP: AFROTOPES @ CAA 2016

*AFROTROPES*

*College Art Association 104th Annual Conference*

*Washington DC, February 3-6, 2016*

Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson, Northwestern University

*Submissions due to h-copeland@northwestern.edu and krista-thompson@northwestern.edu by **May 8, 2015. Visit **http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/2016CallforParticipation.pdf * *for CAA submission guidelines, requirements, and forms*.

This conference session centers on the aesthetic, historical, and theoretical terrain opened up by the “afrotrope.” We coined this neologism as a way of referring to those recurrent visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity in the modern era, from the slave ship icon produced in 1788 by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade to the “I *AM* A MAN” signs famously held up by striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968.

As their rich afterlives make clear, afrotropes resonate widely long after their initial appearance. For instance, the “I *AM* A MAN” sign has served as the basis for a 1988 painting by Glenn Ligon, a sandwich board worn by Sharon Hayes during a 2005 New York street performance, and a poster wielded by protesters in Benghazi during the Arab Spring. Accordingly, our conceptualization of the afrotrope emphasizes how changes to cultural forms over time and space speak to the ways that touchstones of African diasporic history, subjectivity, and modes of resistance are produced and consumed globally by a range of actors for a variety of ends.

By homing in on the material transformation of specific afrotropes over several iterations, we hope to reframe approaches to the ways that modes of cultural exchange come to structure representational possibilities. While our theorization of the afrotrope is indebted to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s writing on black figurative turns, we also look toward the work of art historians such as T.J. Clark, George Kubler, and Christopher Wood in elaborating new models for thinking temporality, authorship, and transmission that the afrotrope at once instances and demands.

Indeed, we would argue that the afrotrope makes palpable how modern subjects have appropriated widely available representational means only to undo their formal contours and to break apart their significatory logic. At the same time, the concept enables a fresh consideration of what is repressed or absented within the visual archive. The afrotrope, in other words, offers a vital heuristic through which to understand how visual motifs take on flesh over time and to reckon with that which remains unknown or cast out of the visual field. Ultimately, the aim of our session is not only to identify key afrotropes—with an eye toward producing an edited user’s guide to these forms—but also to theorize how their transmission illuminates the visual technologies of modern cultural formation.

CFP for College Art Association session (2016, Washington, DC)- Due May 8, 2015

AFROTROPES

College Art Association 104th Annual Conference

Washington DC, February 3–6, 2016

Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson, Northwestern University

Submissions due to h-copeland@northwestern.edu and krista-thompson@northwestern.edu by May 8, 2015. Visit http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/2016CallforParticipation.pdf for CAA submission guidelines, requirements, and forms.

This conference session centers on the aesthetic, historical, and theoretical terrain opened up by the “afrotrope.” We coined this neologism as a way of referring to those recurrent visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity in the modern era, from the slave ship icon produced in 1788 by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade to the “I AM A MAN” signs famously held up by striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968.

As their rich afterlives make clear, afrotropes resonate widely long after their initial appearance. For instance, the “IAM A MAN” sign has served as the basis for a 1988 painting by Glenn Ligon, a sandwich board worn by Sharon Hayes during a 2005 New York street performance, and a poster wielded by protesters in Benghazi during the Arab Spring. Accordingly, our conceptualization of the afrotrope emphasizes how changes to cultural forms over time and space speak to the ways that touchstones of African diasporic history, subjectivity, and modes of resistance are produced and consumed globally by a range of actors for a variety of ends.

By homing in on the material transformation of specific afrotropes over several iterations, we hope to reframe approaches to the ways that modes of cultural exchange come to structure representational possibilities. While our theorization of the afrotrope is indebted to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s writing on black figurative turns, we also look toward the work of art historians such as T.J. Clark, George Kubler, and Christopher Wood in elaborating new models for thinking temporality, authorship, and transmission that the afrotrope at once instances and demands.

Indeed, we would argue that the afrotrope makes palpable how modern subjects have appropriated widely available representational means only to undo their formal contours and to break apart their significatory logic. At the same time, the concept enables a fresh consideration of what is repressed or absented within the visual archive. The afrotrope, in other words, offers a vital heuristic through which to understand how visual motifs take on flesh over time and to reckon with that which remains unknown or cast out of the visual field. Ultimately, the aim of our session is not only to identify key afrotropes—with an eye toward producing an edited user’s guide to these forms—but also to theorize how their transmission illuminates the visual technologies of modern cultural formation.

American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York | NEH Summer Institute @ Bard Graduate Center

American Material Culture: Nineteenth-Century New York
NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers
At the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York City, July 6-31, 2015.

Objects matter. Material culture scholars use artifactual evidence such as consumer goods, architecture, clothing, landscape, decorative arts, and many other types of material.

The Bard Graduate Center will host a four-week NEH Summer Institute on American Material Culture. The institute will focus on the material culture of the nineteenth century and use New York as its case study because of its role as a national center for fashioning cultural commodities and promoting consumer tastes. We will study significant texts in the scholarship of material culture together as well as in tandem with visiting some of the wonderful collections in and around New York City for our hands-on work with artifacts. The city will be our laboratory to explore some of the important issues of broad impact that go well beyond New York.

We welcome applications from college teachers and other scholars with some experience doing object-based work, as well as those who have never taught or studied material culture. Application materials and other information about content, qualifications, stipends, housing, etc. is available at http://www.bgc.bard.edu/neh-institute.

The application deadline is March 2, 2015.

David Jaffee, Project Director
Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture

For more information, please contact:
Zahava Friedman-Stadler
Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture
38 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
212.501.3026 / nehinstitute@bgc.bard.edu

CFP: “Black Arts United States: Institutions and Interventions” @ Northwestern University

“Black Arts United States: Institutions and Interventions”
June 4 -6, 2015
Northwestern University

Black expressive culture in the United States has a long and contested history whose boundaries are almost impossible to qualify and whose animating forces continue to evolve. Yet the African American arts—whether film, theater, dance, visual art, music, literature, or performance—necessarily tack between the pull of tradition and the push toward innovation, a dynamic often reflected in the processes through which artistic practices are codified as either conventional or transgressive at any given moment. Such designations both illuminate the historical conditions in which black art is produced and determine what practices come to be circulated, canonized, denigrated, or forgotten.

Bringing together artists, scholars, activists, administrators, and representatives of arts organizations, this cross-disciplinary conference aims to reconsider how
we understand what constitutes an intervention within the black arts, and how such interventions come into contact with mainstream and culturally specific
institutional frames. Given the vexed conditions in which black aesthetic practice now unfolds—thanks to a shrinking public sphere increasingly shaped by market forces rather than cultural expertise—these concerns seem particularly pressing today, but they are part and parcel of that much longer history of black subjects’ coming to voice within American culture.

Accordingly, the conference organizing committee welcomes proposals on the following themes:
• The relationship between tradition and innovation in the black arts
• The role of “mainstream” institutions in shaping black artistic histories
• The history of black arts institutions in the United States and the challenges facing them today
• The politics of institutionally funded artists versus independent artists
• The relationship between academic institutions and communities relative to black artistic production
• New understandings of cross-institutional collaborations
• Alternative networks for institutionalizing the black arts
• Interventions into, critiques of, and/or resistance to institutions
• The impact of criticism on the valuation of black art
• The impact of audience expectation on black artistic production in an age of new media
• Governmentality versus marketability of the black arts
• Spatial and temporal assumptions about black arts
• Non-urban spaces for black art production
• Black arts and the environment
• Black arts and/as activism
• Black arts as commodity
• Black arts and political economy
• Black arts as a site of resistance
• Black arts and the public sphere

Please submit a proposal (250 words or less) for individual papers of 15 – 20 minutes (approx. 8 – 10 double spaced pages in length) or visual presentations (short films, performances, videos), along with audio/video needs and a 2-page CV highlighting research and experience germane to the proposed presentation to bai@northwestern.edu by December 5, 2014.

Please include “BAI Conference Proposal” in the subject line. Participants will be notified of acceptance or rejection of the proposal by January 16, 2015.

The Black Arts Initiative (BAI) at Northwestern University cultivates an interdisciplinary approach to black arts. Launched in 2012, BAI seeks to engage myriad perspectives, strengthen Northwestern’s involvement in black arts, and connect with a broader community of scholars, practitioners and community members through research, pedagogy, practice, and civic & community engagement. You can learn more about us at our website: www.bai.northwestern.edu