Category: conferences & symposia

CFP: Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, March 11-13, 2027

Framing the Human in the Nineteenth Century

48th Annual Conference

Nineteenth-Century Studies Association

Philadelphia, PA

March 11-13, 2027

Conference website: https://ncsaweb.net/2027-conference-information/

Call for Proposals
Submission Deadline: October 31, 2026
Notification of Acceptance: January 2027
Please submit proposals via this Google Form
Questions? Email the conference organizers at ncsa2027conference@gmail.com

The Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (NCSA) invites proposals for 15-minute papers (300-word proposal) or complete panels of 3-4 papers (600-word proposal) that examine the shifting meanings and status of “the human” in the long nineteenth century—a period shaped by transformative scientific, social, and philosophical developments that continue to inform present-day thought. During this time, evolutionary theory and social Darwinism challenged the boundaries between humans and animals and raised new questions about human difference across race, class, and ethnicity. Theological and philosophical discourses reevaluated humanity’s relationship to the divine, while pseudosciences such as phrenology, physiognomy, and anthropometry sought to codify human variation through tools of measurement often aligned with colonial and racial hierarchies. Advances in the natural sciences speculated on human origins and extraterrestrial life, situating “the human” within a larger cosmic framework. Industrialization redefined labor and bodily limits, generating anxieties about overpopulation, and paradoxically, race suicide and population extinction. Amid these pressures, labor and voting rights movements gained momentum, as marginalized groups fought for full inclusion. We welcome proposals from a variety of disciplines that engage with these and other transformations that redefined what it meant to be human—and to belong to humanity—across the long nineteenth century.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • The influence of evolutionary theory on concepts of the human and the human/animal divide, including artistic and literary responses
  • Scientific efforts to define human origins and difference through anthropology, racial theory, and other emerging disciplines
  • Population anxieties related to degeneration, overpopulation, and demographic change
  • Emancipated and enslaved bodies
  • The effects of industrialization and technological advancement on understandings of the human body, labor, and automation
  • The rise of the human sciences—psychology, physiology, and medicine—and new approaches to the mind and self
  • Migration and the movement of people, and their impact on ideas of race, nation, and identity
  • Secularization and shifting relationships between the human and the divine
  • Changing human relationships to the environment and the nonhuman world
  • Human rights, labor, and suffrage movements and the redefinition of personhood
  • Transformations in education and access to knowledge
  • The role of cultural institutions (museums, libraries, exhibitions) in shaping public and humanist discourse

CFP: ACRAH/CAA2027

ACRAH will be at CAA2027. The topic of next year’s session will be The Materials of Race. We are welcoming submissions and look forward to you joining us in person at CAA in New York in February.

The deadline to submit for CAA is August 31, 2026.

Abstract:

Race is a powerful ideology, one advanced in images and objects that are the outcomes of artists’ manipulation of chosen materials. What is the significance of materials in critical race art history? Scholars working in this area might consider the perception of materials which play a part in historical and contemporary racialization of places, experiences, objects, and living beings. In what ways are characteristics and descriptions of texture, density, strength, malleability, reflectivity, and weight associated with racial quality and/or personality (or both)? If a material like paper is considered “a carrier of memory and process” (Frederick, Donnelly, and Kenney 2026), how do materials contribute to racialization as an historical and ongoing preoccupation? As other social historians do, critical race art historians might analyze the circulation and value of materials in local networks and global markets to map the connections to agential action and the exercise of power. Because the most recent material turn has been driven by a revived appreciation for craft and simultaneously threatened by the lightning fast adoption of generative AI-created art and design, interrogations of liberal claims that digitization lowers barriers to access (while distancing us from material engagements) are also relevant. This panel seeks varied perspectives from scholars, curators, artists, and/or archivists to contribute to this panel discussion.

The full CFP for CAA2027 can be found here.

CFP: 2026 MAC Conference

Caribbean Museums: Connectors, Conveners, and Catalysts for Change

The Museums Association of the Caribbean invites proposals for its 2026 conference, taking place in Trinidad & Tobago, November 9-13, 2026. We welcome submissions from Caribbean creatives, scholars, museum professionals, and cultural practitioners. The Call for Proposals is open now.

Learn more and submit here:
https://caribbeanmuseums.com/mac-conference-2026-call-for-proposals/

ACRAH will be at CAA2026!

The ACRAH/CAA2026 panel will be Excavating Race in the Archive

This session will remote/hybrid on Thursday, February 19, 2026 at 11:00am – 12:30pm local Chicago time. If you are in Chicago you can attend in person at the Hilton Chicago – 3rd Floor – Williford B.

Check out the full session description here: CAA2026

The ACRAH Business Meeting will be held in the same room on Thursday, February 19, 2026 from 1:00pm-2:00pm local Chicago time.

Slavery North: Call for Abstracts — Deadline Dec. 19, 2025

Slavery North is pleased to invite participation in an academic conference, Rebellion, Resistance, and Refuge: Slavery and Border-Crossing during the American Revolution.

The conference will take place in person from Thursday, July 9 to Sunday, July 12, 2026, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.

On the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Slavery North invites proposals for papers that rethink the cultures, events, and experiences of the Revolutionary War. This call encourages new scholarship that reexamines the Revolutionary War through the experiences of enslaved people in British North America, exploring themes of displacement, resistance, and freedom across emerging national borders.

Call for Abstracts:

Deadline for Abstracts: Friday, December 19, 2025

Slavery North invites proposals for 20-minute papers from graduate students, scholars, professors, and cultural and heritage workers. Proposals must include:

· Name, title, affiliation/institution, and location (city, province/state, country)

· Paper title

· Abstract: 200-300 words

· Two-page CV (featuring research highlights)

Submission Instructions:

Please submit your abstract and supporting materials via email as PDF attachments by Emily Davidson at: emilydavidso@umass.edu

More information: https://slaverynorth.com/event/call-for-abstracts-academic-conference/

The full call for abstracts is here.

We encourage you to circulate this invitation across your scholarly and community networks.

CFP: “Photography Beyond the Vault” Photography Network Symposium 2025

PHOTOGRAPHY BEYOND THE VAULT
PN VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM, DECEMBER 4–6, 2025

https://www.photographynetwork.net/symposium-2025-call-for-papers

Photography Network’s fifth annual symposium will consider the subject of photography collections and the institutions that shape them. When Rosalind Krauss published her 1982 essay “Photography’s Discursive Spaces,” questioning the categorical shifts of historic photographs from archives to art museums, the effects of the 1970s “Photo Boom” were still unfolding. Today, a half century after the founding of influential galleries, museums, and academic programs focused on photography, the medium is fully ensconced in the global art market and public collections through countless prints, negatives, books, magazines, and many other materials. At the same time, this history centers on the United States and western Europe, and within these geopolitical regions, scholars and critics have long noted how particular sets of photographs are privileged for preservation and study over others. Collecting photographs became a way to value and prioritize certain stories over others. 

Drawing inspiration from the Nepal Picture Library, a digital archive of over 120,000 photographs that strives to create a broad and inclusive visual archive of Nepali social and cultural history, this symposium seeks to present a current appraisal of changes to photography collections around the globe. Our keynote speaker will be NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Co-Founder and Director of photo.circle, a platform for photography in Nepal including the Nepal Picture Library, and the organizer of Photo Kathmandu—an international photography festival that serves as an alternative platform for conversations between visual storytellers and local audiences. 

For our 2025 virtual symposium, we invite proposals that critically examine how the institutional frameworks of photographic history and practice—often shaped by Western models of scholarship, archiving, and pedagogy—are unevenly applied across global contexts, and that explore how alternative or locally grounded approaches can challenge, expand, or reconfigure dominant narratives in the field. How can photography collections of the future improve and how can we better serve these collections?
Proposals might consider: 
Alternative collecting, preservation, or display practices
Issues of access to and ownership of photographs
Legacies of colonialism and histories of resistance in photography collections
Absence, loss, and destruction of photographs 
Digitization, databases, and AI as tools 
Artists in the archives and archives as art
Photography’s “discursive spaces” today

Submission Information: 

Photography Network invites proposals across disciplines and a broad range of subjects that reflect the geographic and thematic diversity of the field. Practitioners and scholars at any stage of their careers are welcome to submit their research. We also welcome international scholars but note that the symposium will be in English.

The symposium organizers encourage a variety of presentational styles. In addition to proposals for individual, 15-minute papers, we also seek alternative-format presentations (e.g., workshops and roundtables). Applicants may submit up to 2 proposals, provided that one is in an alternative format. Sessions will be organized around accepted submissions, rather than prescribed themes.

To be considered for a panel or alternative-format presentation, please prepare: 
(1) a 250-word abstract with a clear indication of format, and
(2) a two-page resume or CV.
All files should be named “[LAST NAME]–CV” or “[LAST NAME]–ABSTRACT.”
Email completed materials by August 15 to photographynetworksymposium@gmail.com. Notifications of accepted proposals will be emailed by August 31. The symposium will be held online December 4–6. 2025. 
Note: Accepted presenters must be Photography Network members in good standing at the time of the symposium. We have a sliding scale membership: $20 (Student/Unaffiliated), $40 (Affiliated), or $100 (Senior). We also have free need-based memberships. Please visit Photography Network’s membership page for more information on how to join and email any questions to photographynetworkboard@gmail.com.

Call for Research Writing: Submit your research by Sept. 15, 2025 to the Met Journal

The Metropolitan Museum of Art invites  invite you to submit your research to the Metropolitan Museum Journal.

The Journal publishes articles and research notes that contain original research on works of art in The Met’s collection.

Articles contribute extensive and thoroughly argued scholarship—art historical, technical, and scientific—whereas research notes are narrower in scope, focusing on a specific aspect of new research or presenting a significant finding from technical analysis, for example.

The maximum length for articles is 8,000 words (including endnotes) and 10–12 images, and for research notes 4,000 words (including endnotes) and 4–6 images. 

The process of peer review is double-anonymous. Manuscripts are reviewed by the Journal Editorial Board, composed of members of the curatorial, conserva­tion, and scientific departments, as well as scholars from the broader academic community.

Articles and research notes in the Journal appear in print and online, and are accessible in JStor on the University of Chicago Press website.

Deadline for submissions for Vol. 61 (2026): September 15, 2025.

Submission guidelines: 

www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/met/instruct

Please send materials to: 

journalsubmissions@metmuseum.org

Questions? Write to:

Elizabeth.Block@metmuseum.org

Inspiration from the collection: 

www.metmuseum.org/art/collection

View the Journal: 

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/loi/met

To Attend: James A. Porter Colloquium – Register Now

The 35th Annual James A. Porter Colloquium

on African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora

Dates: April 3-5, 2025

Locations:

  • April 3, 2025- The Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park (In-Person)
  • April 4, 2025- The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC(In-Person and Live-streamed on Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Youtube page)
  • April 5, 2025- National Gallery of Art, Washington,DC (In-Person Only and Live-streamed on National Gallery of Art’s Youtube page) & Howard University, Washington DC(In-Person Only and Live-streamed on the Porter Colloquium Youtube page)

Colloquium Theme Synopsis:

The Shape of Race

In partnership with the Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Association of Critical Race Art History, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Howard University Gallery of Art and the National Gallery of Art, the Department of Art in Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts invites the public to convene to examine new developments in the area of critical race art history.

Register for Driskell Center events on Thursday, April 3, 2024 by clicking the links below:

4:00PM Deity of the Circle Performance

6:00PM Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Kellie Jones

All additional registration can be completed through this eventbrite page.

Register on Eventbrite

Save the Date: 2025 James A. Porter Colloquium

ACRAH will be at CAA2025!

The ACRAH/CAA2025 panel will be Critical Race Art History Roundtable: Doing the Work

The session will be in-person at the New York Hilton Midtown – 2nd Floor – Nassau West on February 14, 2025 at 2:30pm EST.

The ACRAH Business Meeting will also be held in the same room February 14, 2025 at 1:00pm EST.

Session Abstract:

What does it mean to do critical race art history? This session brings together scholars in a conversation about how a critical race art history approach can manifest in our work. Having proposed this line of inquiry twenty-five years ago, we want to reflect on the nature of the concept and how the field has evolved. What are the goals of critical race art history, and what are its methodologies and theoretical grounds? What are the conceptual parameters of this lens on art history–what does it mean to center an understanding that race structures how we see and shapes our reception of art? What tools and methods do we employ to make the operations of race visible? How do we move from American identity politics –that emphasizes a white/non-white binary and focuses on the identification of negative racial tropes and artistic rebuttals to the harm of such imagery–to a comprehensive unpacking of the systemic racialization in art? What do we gain when we foreground how race informs the construction of the visual cultures that we inhabit? How do the insights of critical race art history become integrated into art history at large?

Participants:

Kymberly Pinder, Yale University

Pinder is Professor of Art and History of Art and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art. She is the editor of Race-ing Art History: Critical Reading in Race and Art History (Routledge, 2002).

Tatiana Flores, University of Virginia

Flores is the Edgar Shannon Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor in Art History at the University of Virginia. She is an editor of The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History (2023).

Elizabeth Hutchinson, Barnard University

Hutchison is the Tow Associate Professor of Art History at Barnard College. She is the author of The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890-1915 (Duke University Press, 2009).

Lily Cho, York University

Cho is Associate Professor of English at York University. She is the author of Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens (McGill-Queens University Press, 2021).