Category: call for participation

An interdisciplinary postgraduate symposium

3 December 2011

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds.

Keynote Speaker, Prof. Lubaina Himid, International artist and curator, University of Central Lancashire

Call for Papers Deadline 15th September 2011

In 1995 Kobena Mercer published the first in his Annotating Art’s Histories edited series, Cosmopolitan Modernisms.  In his introduction, Mercer stated that the series would offer:

‘[A] fresh approach [to art history] by showing how a shared history of art and ideas was experienced differently around the globe … In a situation where the aspiration to be all inclusive has become the official watchword of institutional policy, has the very idea of ‘inclusion’ now become a double-edged sword?’

In 2011, as a developing generation of artists, curators, art historians and academics enter the field of visual arts, this symposium at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, seeks to investigate how we are to engage with the challenges of a shared and plural art history that Mercer, and so many others, speak of.   What is the meaning of ‘inclusion’ today, sixteen years after Mercer’s publication? The symposium hopes to explore the numerous ways in which issues of race, culture, class, sex and gender have been considered across the various arenas of visual art, and how this emerging generation of those operating in the visual arts engage with the existing challenges of the past, present and future.

Otherwise Engaged is a one-day symposium that invites postgraduate students to submit proposals that consider the challenges of intervention, integration, separatism, confrontation, assimilation, ghettoisation and accommodation.  How have marginalised spaces and mainstream institutions engaged with these challenges?  We are interested in exploring the processes, relationships and pluralities of the various sites of the marginal and the mainstream.  What are the experiences and examples of specific interventions, theoretical strategic models, and tactical approaches from contemporary art practice and writing, culture, education and curating?

Otherwise Engaged is an interdisciplinary event that crosshatches experiences, perspectives and analyses from art history, fine art, cultural studies, museum and curatorial studies, feminist studies, gender studies, sociology and post/colonial studies, although papers from other disciplines are also welcome. While the symposium is situated in contemporary Britain and the complexities of representation and identity internal to Britain, we strongly encourage the exploration of relationships with other sites, both geographically and generationally.

We invite abstracts of a maximum length of 300 words by 15 September 2011 (20 minute papers). You will receive confirmation of acceptance of the proposed presentation by October 1, 2011.  You will need to submit your proposal together with a completed form available from the conference organisers – contact  espencermills@yahoo.com.

http://www.aaastudies.org/2012/call/

Washington, DC April 11-14, 2012

Submissions due by Saturday, October 1, 2010

EXPANDING THE POLITICAL: POWER, POETICS, PRACTICES

The theme, “Expanding the Political: Power, Poetics, Practices,” refers to the location of the meetings in Washington, DC, the seat of politics and power in the United States. Asian Americans play an increasing role in U.S. and international politics in their roles as voters, politicians, and policy makers. At the same time, we wish to highlight the everyday and informal political practices of Asians in America as they use art, academics, and activism to engage—and change—the world around them. We invite submissions that address formal politics and informal politics in their multiple dimensions.

We welcome presentations that explore traditional conceptions of “politics” and political action on topics such as electoral politics, Asian Americans in the government, activism and social movements, and political interests and issues. Do Asian Americans constitute a political block (or have they ever)? How can we interpret the increasing presence of Asian American Republican politicians? Is “Asian America” a useful political category? Simultaneously, we hope the conference will expand our conception of the political to other areas including, but not limited to, the politics of: commemoration and memorialization; war and peace; dynamics within/across/outside Asian American communities, communities of color, and multiracial Asians; immigration, refugee status, citizenship, and national belonging; the relationship between Pacific Island Studies and Asian American Studies; Asian settler colonialism; empire and race. What generative political work emerges in the conversation between academics, activists, and artists? How do Asian Americans contend with the politics of the everyday? The overarching emphasis for this meeting is the analysis of power in its various manifestations in Asian American lives.

We encourage submissions representing all the disciplines covered in Asian American Studies and from individuals engaged in political work, broadly speaking, outside the academy, including politicians, artists and activists. We especially encourage panels incorporating a range of institutional and extra-institutional locations, from students to senior scholars, and from painters to policy makers. Complete panel submissions (with a minimum of three papers and a maximum of four, with a moderator) that attend to the conference theme and reflect this heterogeneity will be given priority, but we will consider individual submissions as well.

In addition to panels, workshops, and roundtables, this year we introduce an inaugural invitation for chaired WORKING PAPER sessions dedicated specifically to this year’s conference theme. For these sessions, panelists will submit longer papers (15-25 pages) prior to the conference, and sessions will be devoted to intensive commentary and discussion on a set of 2-3 papers with a shared theme. A faculty expert on the theme will chair each session and deliver detailed feedback to each author. This format will foster a deeper scholarly exchange and engagement, and showcase the common intellectual threads that run through our diverse research projects. We encourage scholars from various ranks to submit their papers to the Working Paper sessions.

We accept electronic submissions. Paper and panel applicants must be members of the Association for Asian American Studies and all presenters must register and submit their conference fee to be included in the printed conference program. Please check the “WORKING PAPERS” box if you would like your paper or panel submission to be considered for the Working Papers chaired sessions. Relevant information, including the membership form and submissions guidelines, is available at the Association for Asian American Studies Web site at http://www.aaastudies.org/forms

We look forward to seeing you at the 2012 Association for Asian American Studies conference in Washington, DC!

Committee Co-Chairs,
Sylvia Chong and Nitasha Sharma

*All paper and panel applicants must be members of AAAS in order to submit conference proposals. AAAS membership number or confirmation of membership from JHUP will be required with all proposals.

**AV equipment will be available on request but on a limited, first-come-first-served basis due to budget restrictions. Please make your requests when sending in your proposals.

“Textile Trades and Consumption in the Indian Ocean World, from Early
Times to the Present”

Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC)
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2-4 November 2012

Co-Organisers: Gwyn Campbell (IOWC, McGill University), Sarah Fee (Royal
Ontario Museum), and Pedro Machado (Indiana University)

This multi-disciplinary international conference aims to bring together
scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to share findings,
methodologies and theoretical perspectives on cloth’s critical role in
driving exchanges in the Indian Ocean World from early times to the present
day.

Oceans have emerged as promising intellectual frameworks for reinterpreting
past and present spatial and temporal constructs. The Indian Ocean World
(IOW) in particular has recently attracted academic attention as a space of
movement and inter-relation that transcends conventional paradigms centring
on the nation state, regional studies, and European empires. Stretching from
East Africa through the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia to China, the
IOW forms a unique macro-region where the monsoon regime of winds and
currents largely moulded production and exchange. Indeed, the IOW emerged
during the first millennium CE as arguably the first “global” economy,
defined as a sophisticated and durable system of long-distance exchange.
There is further debate as to the impact on the IOW trading structure of
Europeans from the sixteenth century, the international economy of the
nineteenth century, European colonialism and its aftermath, and modern
globalisation.

Central to these debates is the role of textiles. For centuries, cloths of
various origins, fibres, colours and patterns have been carried along coasts
and across vast distances to communities that demanded certain types in
accordance with their specific cultural, social and political universes.
Rather than take a particular fibre, ‘country’ or European company as the
unit of study, this conference aims to explore the broader cross-currents of
textile flows in the IOW. It seeks to explore, in particular, structures of
trade, distribution, demand, marketing and consumption – in all of which
finance and credit played vital roles. It also strives to understand local
consumer demand as a vital force in shaping the economic, political, social,
and artistic history in both producer and consumer communities. Emerging
from the wider scholarship of culturally inflected material histories of the
movement and exchange of commodities, the study of textile consumption and
the logics of consumer tastes, as socially and culturally embedded
processes, can offer compelling insight into how societies, communities and
people create and maintain identities through strategies of self-fashioning,
and thereby shape the world around them. Moreover, it is when studied within
the same analytical frame as the production, distribution and marketing of
textiles that consumption can contribute most profoundly to an understanding
of the dynamics of the worlds of the Indian Ocean stretching from Africa to
East Asia.

This multi-disciplinary international conference invites paper proposals
that examine any aspect of the trade, exchange and consumption of textiles in
the Indian Ocean world from early times to the present day. We particularly
welcome papers that explore networks and structures of:

– local finance and credit
– distribution and marketing
– demand and consumption

and within these the significance of (i) gender and age; and (ii) religious
practice and ideology  (including the ritual, political and social uses and
meanings attached to imported cloth)

Dates and Registration:
•  Deadline for submission of abstracts (title; 1-2 paragraphs): 30
September 2011.
• The review process will be completed by 1st November 2001.
•  Papers selected for the conference must be submitted no later than
1st September 2012.
•  The registration fee is $175 US ($75 US for students) payable by
1st September 2012.
•  The late registration fee (after 1st September 2012) is $200 US and $100
US for students

Kindly contact Sarah Fee <sarahf@rom.on.ca> or Pedro Machado
<pmachado@indiana.edu> with proposals (or with any queries).

African Music in the 21st Century – An Iconic Turn?
An International Symposium Celebrating the 21st Anniversary of the African Music Archives Mainz (AMA)
To be held at: Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. June 13th – 16th 2012

Convenors: Hauke Dorsch, Matthias Krings

Since the advent of the 21st century and the proliferation of digital media a shift in the consumption and marketing of music in a number of African countries occurred: Videos gained an increasing importance. Today, Video-CDs and DVDs are widely sold in African cities, bars and restaurants show music clips and music casting shows on TV, music videos are available online through sites like youtube, but also via homepages and blogs devoted to artists, genres, and (at least ideally) music of the entire continent.

Due to this online availability and easy circulation of discs the visual aspects of music, especially dance styles, clothing fashions, and coiffure spread more easily and rapidly than ever before between different African countries and between African and its Diaspora. For example, migrants stay up to date with regards to musical and fashion trends in their respective countries of origin thanks to these videos. Prior to the mediatisation of African music through visual technologies, dance styles could only be transmitted through the presence of human bodies. Due to the proliferation of videos African dance and music travel trans-nationally on South-South and South-North axes at an accelerated speed.

So far, the pictorial turn (Mitchell) or iconic turn (Boehm) in Cultural Studies informed only few studies on African music. Consequently, the change following the digitisation and video-isation of the production and dissemination of African music is still under-researched. Taking music videos as its vantage point, this symposium will look at visual aspects of the performance and analysis of music more generally.

We invite young researchers and established scholars to present papers on the different ways music in Africa (and beyond) is interpreted, illustrated, translated or extended in its meaning by visual representations. These may refer to the analysis of individual videos, the comparison of a number of videos, or genres, changing trends of video aesthetics, the convergence of visual and aesthetic trends from elsewhere – in Africa and beyond (i.e. MTV, Bollywood, etc.). Furthermore, papers on the transformation (or even emergence) of music industries in Africa due to the impact of the visual are welcome. How are music videos produced on the ground? Who are the agents of the iconic turn in African music? How does music television support the iconic turn in African music? Finally, we invite papers on other aspects of the visual in music, performance (i.e. looking at costumes, stage shows, stage lighting, etc.), on festivals and of course dance.

The symposium will celebrate the African Music Archives’ 21st anniversary. The AMA hosts Germany’s largest collection of recordings of African popular music. It includes roughly 10.000 recordings, from shellac records of the 1950s, to vinyl discs and singles from the 1960s to the 1990s, to music cassettes of the 1980s and 90s, to recent CDs, VideoCDs and DVDs.

The symposium will be hosted by the African Music Archives, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. It will take place on campus from June 13th to 16th. Organisers: Dr. Hauke Dorsch, Prof. Dr. Matthias Krings
Please submit your proposal no later than Sept., 15th 2011 and your full paper no later than May, 23rd 2012 to Hauke Dorsch dorschh@uni-mainz.de.

“The New Native American Art History”

International Congress of Americanists
Vienna, Austria
July 15-20, 2012

Session Conveners:
Bill Anthes, Pitzer College
Carolyn Kastner, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Kate Morris, Santa Clara University

The symposium session “The New Native American Art History” has been accepted for inclusion at the 54^th International Congress of Americanists, to be held in Vienna in July of 2012 (see http://ica2012.univie.ac.at/ for more information on the Congress.)  This session explores the ways in which the field of Native American art history has been transformed since 1992, the “Year of Indigenous Peoples”.  In this watershed year, a number of “Columbian Quincentennial Response Shows” were mounted, bringing Native American art and culture to a new degree of public attention, and placing it in the context of a worldwide discourse on the legacies of European colonialism. Additionally, 1992 saw the publication of Janet Catherine Berlo’s The Early Years of Native American Art History. Compiled and published during a time of rapid change in the larger field of cultural studies, Berlo’s volume was reflective of a growing tendency toward disciplinary critique.

Today the study and display of Native American art has been transformed by the introduction of new theories of visual culture; post-colonial, global, and media studies; and by an emerging interest in indigenous epistemologies.  “The New Native American Art History” seeks to explore in detail some of these developments, incursions, and conflicts, and assess their impact in the development of a “new” history. We are interested in papers that address the theoretical, methodological and institutional changes and challenges of the past two decades.  These might include discussion and analysis of the passage in the United States of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; the founding of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian; the formation of alternative spaces of exhibition such as tribal museums; the emergence of an “aboriginal curatorial perspective”; or consideration of the increasing visibility of Native American contemporary art provided by International Biennales.

Please submit a paper title and a 200-word abstract to  bill_anthes@pitzer.edu.

Deadline for submissions is August 15, 2011.

“Radical Aesthetics and Politics: Intersections in Music, Art and Critical Social Theory”
9 December 2011
Hunter College, CUNY

http://chreculture.blogspot.com/
In the past few decades, the study of sonic, visual, textual, and other media practices have emerged as productive areas of cultural analysis and critique. Often constitutive of paradoxes and tensions within society, these aesthetic practices have prompted critical engagements with structures of power and knowledge. Researchers and artists have sought to deconstruct particular relationships between aesthetics and power, creating renewed and emergent questions with which current social theory must engage. For instance, how might we think about the “public sphere” in terms of nodes of encounters with the sonic, the visual, and the textual? What forms of political action and sociality emerge from civic engagements with visual, sonic, and textual culture? How are sonic and material landscapes engaged with as embodied practices? What might this imply about the corporeality of the political, the ethical, and the technological? What are the disjunctures and syntheses between artists’ and scholars’ concept-driven productions and the ways in which audiences interpret and construct life-worlds with these productions?

Continue reading “CFP: Radical Aesthetics and Politics @ Hunter College”

A Conference
On Television
Yale University
February 3-4, 2012

http://ontelevision.commons.yale.edu/

We all watch television. But in this moment of dispersed and fragmented viewership, we all engage with television differently: as an entertainment medium, a home appliance, a range of program content, a description of viewing behavior, a set of technologies, a media industry, and a means for collective social experiences. Both technological platform and cultural form, television sits at the intersection of a number of humanities and social science disciplines. As observers of — and participants in — this contemporary moment, we are compelled to ask: What makes television television?

This conference will address contemporary trends in the field of television studies and reconsider the historical currents that inform our understandings of the present and prospective future of the medium.

Institute of African Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS
Culture and Society in Post-Colonial Nigeria in honor of ULLI BEIER.
November 28 – 30, 2011

The conference is being organised in honour of Ulli Beier, not only to invoke his memorable role in the cultural production in Nigeria from the years immediately before and after the independence, but also to incite robust discussion on his entire oeuvre as a cultural interventionist. In literature, in performance and in Visual Arts, the long list of artists that Ulli Beier’s many fora (Black Opheus, Mbari, Mbari Mbayo) fostered is a proof of his sterling contribution to African culture.

Culture itself encapsulates the dialogic production of meaning and aesthetics through a variety of practices. It also captures discourses associated with a mix of public and private institutions such as cinemas, the media, museums and other sites of socio-historical production. Discourses around such issues expose the mindset of a people; they mirror where a nation is coming from and the direction in which it is moving. After fifty years of independence, Nigeria requires looking back to assess itself.  The project of evolving a new Nigeria has placed emphasis on political and economic factors rather than developing cultural potential for sustainable development. This is a huge lacuna given the fact that culture plays a significant role in the life of a nation.

The conference is intended to stimulate new dimensions of assessing the predicament of pre-colonial Nigeria, privileging cultural history and production. More specifically, we anticipate an interrogation of the double-bind of fusion and rupture of politics and culture. In an attempt to answer many questions that emanate from this, we expect that the conference will generate theses from a wide range of perspectives such as economics, art and science, among others.

Sub-themes include but  are not limited to the following:
* Culture Theory
* Culture, Gender and (Wo)Men’s rights
* Culture, Democracy and Governance
* Globalization, Mass Culture and the New Media
* Material Culture and Cultural Performance
* Culture and Ecology
* Traditional Medicine and Spirituality
* Conflict Prevention and Management
* Social Movements and Ethics

Keynote speaker 1:
Professor Akin Ogundiran, Chair, Africana Studies Department,
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC.
Topic: Crises of Culture and Consciousness in the Postcolony: What is the Future for Nigeria?

Keynote Speaker 2:
Professor Wole Ogundele, Director Centre for Black culture and International Understanding, Osogbo, Osun State.
Topic: He Lived among the Orisha: Ulli Beier and the Yoruba Cultural Revival.

Conference Venue: Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
An abstract of not more than 250 words is expected to reach the conference organizers through the following e-mail addresses: Ohioma Pogoson <tellohio@yahoo.com<mailto:tellohio@yahoo.com> >; Ayo Adeduntan <grandeekay@yahoo.com<mailto:grandeekay@yahoo.com> > not later than August 15, 2011.

Participants shall be notified of the acceptance of their abstracts by August 31, 2011.

Coinciding with PAFA’s exhibition, Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, this March 24, 2012 symposium focuses on intersections of faith, identity, and history in a broad range of works created by modern and contemporary African American artists with special interest in Christian symbols, themes, and motifs relating to issues of faith, family, and community and the struggle for freedom, equality, and justice.

We seek 20-minute papers that examine specific examples of art from the turn of the 20th century to today, exploring such aspects with special interest in art historical methodology.

Paper proposals of no more than two pages double-spaced should be submitted along with a cover letter and c.v. to ALL symposium co-chairs, Dr. Nikki A. Greene nikki.a.greene@gmail.com, Dr. Emily Hage ehage@sju.edu, and Dr. James Romaine drjamesromaine@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission is October 1, 2011.

See the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) website: http://christianityhistoryart.org.