Tag: theory

Calls for Contributors: Book Anthology on Race, Folk, and Ethnography in Visual Culture

Deadline: September 14, 2018

The recent rise in problems of immigration and race are of long historical standing.  During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe, increased colonial expansion, industrialization, economic inequality, and nationalism severely tested the assumptions of a shared social fabric. In this, the visual arts performed a key function by amplifying or mitigating racial and ethnic difference. We are seeking proposals for essays that explore representations of race and folk within the context of the disciplines of ethnography and anthropology. The focus of the book will be to examine art’s role in forming social constructions about the interactions between white majority populations with minorities that are indigenous, migratory or nomadic, or relocated through colonization. Proposals are encouraged which look at understudied countries and challenge traditional assumptions, such as perceived homogenous populations (Scandinavia, for example) or those with diverse and shifting multi-ethnic groups, as in Central Europe and Russia. Of particular interest are topics that consider ambiguities and contradict assumptions of uniform binary relations: East-West fusions within racial origins, interracial marriages, fluctuating borders, and migratory populations.  One might consider the fact that the folk were valorized in definitions of national identity simultaneously with the marginalization of indigenous people through racist characterizations and ethnic categorizations.  So too, admiration for the primitive and the popularity of “exotic” people as entertainment co-existed with their denigration.

Proposals are welcome that apply themes from critical race theories, such as the definition of racial identity through social construction, evidence of microaggressions, and practices of essentializing ethnic groups rather than individuals.  How did countries that viewed themselves as progressive and inclusive deal with evidence that contradicted this?  In what ways did multi-ethnic regions foster a common culture while at the same time practicing biological or cultural racism? How did migratory folk populations disrupt conventional definitions of ethnic identity, which were based in part on geography? Proposals are also welcome that consider continuing echoes of these issues later in the twentieth-century; that look at ways in which marginalized minority groups used culture as a means to empower and define themselves; or that focus on the construction of white racial identity.

Proposals should be approximately 300 words and are due by September 14.

Send proposals and c.v. to: Marsha Morton, mortonmarsha10@gmail.com and Barbara Larson, blarson@uwf.edu

Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art seeks proposals for papers on the topic of “Amateurism and American Visual Culture.” Accepted papers will appear in a guest-edited section of Panorama issue 5.1 (May 2019).

Amateurism, as both a praxis and an attitude, has been a fundamental concept for the development and reception of American art. In the Colonial period, for instance, trained painters and self-taught limners alike were measured against Europe’s professional portraitists, and producers of decorative arts were often viewed as craftspeople or artisans rather than fine artists. And during the nineteenth century itinerant painters and so-called “folk artists” established careers that had little in common with those of artists now recognized as American masters, like Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. At the same time, however, Americans (Benjamin Franklin, for example) have long admired the “Yankee ingenuity” and “useful knowledge” of self-starters and laypeople.

In the twentieth century amateurism emerged as an invaluable foil for American modernists: Robert Henri encouraged the painting of what one knows rather than what one learns; the regionalist artists disavowed the theoretical expertise of the Stieglitz Circle artists and writers; and the junk stylings of some Neo-Dadaists were complemented by their slapdash techniques and a casual disregard for “high art.” Snapshots, home movies, and hobby art are more obvious, though historically far less visible, examples of artforms that have been classified as amateur, and today, of course, DIY productions, both digital and analog, abound, and everyone with a smartphone is an accidental curator.

The various historical and contemporary categorizations of Native American visual culture are especially relevant to these themes. We know, for instance, that Abstract Expressionists borrowed from supposedly “primitive” artforms to heighten the aura of untutored amateurism around their works. But we also know that appropriation is just one context, and a flawed one at that, for analyzing Native American art, which for better and for worse, often finds itself at the crossroads of the vernacular and the institutional. And, of course, Native American artists have negotiated amateur and professional identities for their own purposes, in order to advance sovereignty, for example, or to participate in markets not entirely their own.

Refreshingly, scholars, curators, and publishers have begun to examine the art and visual culture of amateurism in recent years: there is the enduring appeal of the photographic snapshot and accompanying “snapshot aesthetic,” recent books and articles on amateur film, successful folk art exhibitions, and the National Gallery of Art’s current exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art. Nevertheless, the significance of the amateur-professional dialectic to American art requires more critical attention, and, at a time when the arts and humanities are subjected to more and more evaluative measures, the insouciance of amateur art seems more and more urgent.

Panorama seeks papers of approximately 5,000 words that take innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of amateur art and its material, historical, theoretical terrain. We encourage authors to consider the unique advantages of the journal’s online platform, which permits various digital enhancements, such as high-resolution images with zoom capabilities, the embedding of moving images and films, interactive maps, and the reconstruction of historical exhibitions, to name a few possibilities.

To propose a paper, please send a 500-word abstract and curriculum vitae to Justin Wolff: justin.wolff@maine.edu.

Deadline for proposals: May 15, 2018

Deadline for papers: December 31, 2018