Category: conferences & symposia

Critical Encounters: A Graduate Student Symposium in Honor of Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

Friday & Saturday
April 22 & 23, 2011
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Emory University
Reception Hall
Throughout her career Dr. Sidney L. Kasfir has sought to rethink the way scholars, artists, museums, and viewers understand and categorize African art. She has attempted to expand our classificatory system without allowing generalizations to dilute the complex efforts of artists, cultures, and visual languages. This symposium, organized in honor of her retirement from Emory University, considers three themes to which Dr. Kasfir has contributed: Commodification and Tourism; Heritage; and The Artist, The Workshop, and Cultural Brokerage.

Invited graduate students from across the country, in multiple disciplines working with visual culture in Africa, will explore topics related to these themes in a day-long symposium that is open to the Emory community and the public.

This program is co-sponsored by Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, Art History Department, and Institute for African Studies.
Friday, April 22
7:30 pm
Keynote Address
Dr. Chika Okeke-Agulu, Assistant Professor of Art History, Princeton University, New Thoughts on the Mbari Mbayo Workshops in Osogbo, 1962-66

Continue reading “SYMP: African Art Symposium in Honor of Dr. Sidney L. Kasfir @ Emory”

“BLACK IS…BLACK AIN’T”: RECONCEPTUALIZING THE AFRICAN DIASPORA, An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Keynote Speaker: Professor Michele Wallace

Saturday, March 26, 2011
8:15 AM – 6:00 PM

Indiana University-Bloomington, Indiana
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center

Program information and flyer: http://www.indiana.edu/~afroamer/CFPs.html

Description

The African Diaspora has been historically conceived as originating with the Transatlantic Slave trade. However, some would argue that to perceive the African Diaspora only in relation to slavery is to obscure alternative means of conceptualizing the movement of Black bodies. As scholars committed to interdisciplinary research, the Graduate Society of the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University brings together scholars, community activists, artists, and other professionals to interrogate definitions of, theorize about, and imagine new possibilities for the African Diaspora.

Symposium papers will address the following topics:
* What are the practical applications of African American and African Diaspora Studies/Black Studies in the 21st century?
* How do migrations – local, national and international – affect diasporic identities?
* How does contemporary audio/visual media and popular culture help to re-imagine the borders of diasporic communities?
* How do outliers serve as change agents in these communities?
* What are the ways that the academy can engage in constructive dialogues with nonacademic communities?

Home – Cambridge Talks V: The Body in History / The Body in Space.

The history of the body has been a locus of prolific research in the past several decades, engaging scholars from disciplines as diverse as history of medicine, cultural history, literature, sociology, and anthropology. The body’s experience of health and sickness, histories of the senses, changing standards of civility, the body as political instrument – these and other approaches have recovered the centrality of the human subject in studies of the past and present. Yet current scholarship on the body often relegates issues of space to the background, treating it as a neutral setting against which bodies interact. Conversely, treatments of the body and its history are scant in disciplines focused on space and the built environment. In fields like architectural history, geography, and urban studies, the presence of the body is taken for granted and its history rarely emerges as a critical contribution to the history of space.

This conference aims to question such a facile body-space relationship by positing that the history of the body must also be a history of the body in space, and that the history of spatial practices must involve a history of the body. By bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, we hope to interrogate the material specificity of architecture and the body through a range of questions linking the two:

• What role does the built environment play in our understandings of the body?
• How have past regulatory practices of the body influenced the design of spaces?
• How can we reclaim human agency while acknowledging the limits imposed on the body by spatial constructs?

This conference will feature an eclectic mix of performance art, video presentations, and academic papers. Participants include: Linda Nash, David Serlin, Annmarie Adams, Christina Cogdell, Janet Beizer, Priya Srinivasan, Andrew Herscher, Nell Breyer, Carey Foster, and others. Please visit www.cambridgetalks.org for a full schedule of events.

“The Body in History / The Body in Space” is generously supported by Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Provost Fund for Student Collaboration, the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Graduate Student Council, the Program in the History of American Civilization, the Department of the History of Science, and the Department of Anthropology.

Between Theory and Practice: Rethinking Latin American Art in the 21st Century is a two part symposium that will take place in Southern California and in Lima, Peru. The panel of speakers will be comprised of an international group of scholars, curators, museum directors and artists who will discuss new approaches to studying and presenting Latin American art in the 21st century. The first session, from March 11 – 13, 2011 will be held at MOLAA and at The Getty Center in Los Angeles; the second session, from November 2 – 4, 2011 will be held at the Museo de Arte de Lima in Peru. Both sessions will address the same topics but will introduce different speakers.

http://www.molaa.org/Art/Exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/Between-Theory-and-Practice-Rethinking-Latin-American-Art–in-the-21st-Century.aspx

February 25 – 26, 2011

In celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the John Hope Franklin Research Center, the Duke University Libraries and the Office of the Provost present the inaugural Atelier @ Duke, a series of panel discussions on “The Idea of Archive—Producing and Performing Race.” This program is free and open to the public.

http://library.duke.edu/atelier/index.html

For more information contact Coco Fusco at fuscoc@newschool.edu or visit our webpage: http://finearts.parsons.edu/home/?q=node/56

March 26, 2011, 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Free after museum admission.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will host a graduate symposium in
conjunction with the exhibition *Anatomy/Academy: Nexus of Art and Science*

In tribute to Philadelphia’s historical importance as a center for the
artistic and anatomical study of the human body, this symposium examines the
body in relation to the material and visual culture of American art,
focusing on how Philadelphia’s dynamic art and science communities fostered
knowledge of the human body from the early nineteenth century to the
present.

Continue reading “Anatomy/Academy Graduate Symposium @ PAFA”

Dear Colleagues:

I have pasted below the call for papers for the Third International Maroon Conference, “The Return,” in Charles Town, Portland, Jamaica, June 22-25 2011.

This multidisciplinary conference seeks papers and panels that explore representations of Maroon culture in history, literature, art, music, political theory, cultural studies, film, linguistics, and theatre. With its theme “The Return,” it strives to revisit the roots of Maroon values and practices, considering the ways they have endured, transformed and resonated in the Caribbean, Canada, South America, Europe, the United States and Africa.  Offering a unique combination of scholarly panels and cultural events, the third international Maroon conference aims to increase awareness of Maroon contributions to contemporary societies, bringing together descendents of Maroons with scholars interested in Maroon heritage and indigenous cultures.

The conference cultural events and entertainment will commemorate the Annual Quao Victory Day (June 23), and they are part of a larger effort to develop strategies for sustainable development and wealth creation in Maroon communities.

Please send abstracts by 15 March or inquiries to fbotkin@towson.edu