AHRA Newsletter: January - February 2008
This is the latest issue of the AHRA newsletter highlighting forthcoming
events, conferences, publications and other research activities,
including additions to the AHRA website.
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CONFERENCES/SYMPOSIA etc
THE VIENNESE CAFÉ AS AN URBAN SITE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE
Victoria and Albert Museum / Royal College of Art
London
www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe
17-18 October 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS
A two-day conference organised by the Viennese Café and
Fin-de-Siècle Culture Research Project, to be held at the
Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal College of Art, London.
As today, the cafés of fin-de-siècle
Vienna were an important component of modern city life, an extension
of both home and workplace. Cafés were as much to do with
intellectual and social interaction as with procuring refreshment.
This conference will focus on the complexities of the Viennese
café as an urban space in order to better understand wider
questions about Viennese modernism. Through its focus on the café,
the conference aims to redefine our understanding not only of
the arts in Vienna, but also of modernity more generally.
The conference encourages a cross-disciplinary
approach to subjects and welcomes proposals for papers from scholars
and practitioners in any field.
Possible topics include, but are not restricted
to:
The complex inter-relationships between urban modernity and artistic
modernism in relation to the Viennese café; The Viennese
café as a liminal space – public and private, ‘high’
and ‘low’ culture; the café as a site for consumption
– coffee and commerce; Contrasts and comparisons between
the Viennese café and the café cultures of other
world cities; The café as a site for performance; The café
as a designed space – interrelations between modern design,
society and fashion.
The Viennese Café and Fin-de-Siècle
Research Project is funded by the AHRC and is based at the Royal
College of Art and Birkbeck, University of London: www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe
We invite abstracts of 400 words to be submitted
electronically to Dr Charlotte Ashby: charlotte.ashby@rca.ac.uk
Deadline: 15 January 2008
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ARCHITEXTURE:
EXPLORING TEXTUAL AND ARCHITECTURAL SPACES
Departments of Architecture and English Studies, University of
Strathclyde
15-17 April 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS:
This interdisciplinary conference investigates relationships between
architectural and literary constructions of space. It will explore
the influence of spatial theories within literary texts; consider
how writers evoke and represent a sense of place; and invite new
perspectives on the aesthetic, physical and social functions of
texts in the design, production and consumption of the built environment.
The conference also aims to discuss these insights within the
context of Glasgow. The social and performance events –
to include a champagne reception at the City Chambers, a walking
tour of the Necropolis, a trip down the Clyde, and visits to the
old industrial and residential areas of the city – will
encourage participants to reflect on the connections between their
‘academic’ and other uses of text and space.
We welcome a wide range of disciplinary theorisations
of the concepts of text and space, literature and architecture.
This international event aims to bring together scholars, artists,
architects, writers, urban planners and film-makers and many other
interested individuals and organisations. We are happy to accept
contributions in any media but proposals for 20-minute presentations
and 10-minute A2 poster sessions, focused around the following
Architectural themes, are invited:
Different Genres; Historical Movements; Public
and Private Lives; Notational Systems - please contact architexture@strath.ac.uk
for further details.
Abstracts of papers, 300 words maximum, should
be submitted by 30 January 2008, by e-mail, to architexture@strath.ac.uk.
Final draft of papers submitted for publication by 13 August 2008.
Contacts:
Craig McLean, doctoral students, Department of English Studies
Dr. Sarah Edwards, Lecturer, Department of English Studies
Dr. Jonathan Charley, Senior Lecturer, Department of Architecture
Deadline: 30 January 2008
---
CONCEPTS OF CREATIVITY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
ENGLAND
Two-day International Interdisciplinary Symposium
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester
6–7 September 2008
Creation: 'a making or forming of something, as
it were, out of nothing', Edward Phillips, A Nevv VVorld of VVords,
Or a General English Dictionary (London, 1678)
CALL FOR PAPERS:
The early modern period witnessed the flowering of what, today,
we would call the creative arts in England, and in recent years
the social and cultural significance of such activities has come
to be appreciated increasingly by scholars across a broad range
of disciplines. But what exactly did it mean to form something,
‘as it were, out of nothing’ in the seventeenth century?
While our modern understanding of creativity is firmly based around
ideas of imagination and originality, it is far from clear that
such concepts were always relevant to the production of visual
art, music, plays, poetry and literature in the seventeenth century;
moreover, basic tenets that we tend to take for granted—such
as the primacy of the author—have been shown to be inappropriate
in a number of significant studies. The aim of this interdisciplinary
symposium is to explore ways in which we can seek to understand
what it meant to be creative in the early modern period.
We welcome proposals for papers from an interdisciplinary
field, including cultural historians, art historians, dance historians,
theatre historians, musicologists and literary scholars.
Suggested themes include the following:
Ideas of authorship and intellectual property; 'Imitatio' and
originality; Literacy and the function of memory; Performance
and text in music and drama – issues of improvisation; Print
and manuscript cultures – the impact of printing on creativity;
Contemporary terminology for ‘creative’ activities
– ‘art’ and ‘science’; Evidence
for creative processes; Women and creativity; The professional
and the amateur
The symposium forms part of a four-year research
project, ‘Musical Creativity in Restoration England’.
The project comprises the first systematic investigation of professional
musical creativity in Restoration England; based on close study
of the surviving primary sources within the social and cultural
contexts in which they were produced, it seeks to situate composition
within the broader framework of ‘creative activity’
in seventeenth-century England. We are grateful to the AHRC for
its support in funding this symposium. Strongly interdisciplinary
in its approach, the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at
the University of Manchester comprises a subject group including
Music, Art History and Visual Studies, Drama, English and American
Studies, History, and Religions and Theology. The School focuses
on exploring the material, visual, creative and performative dimensions
of culture with a particular interest in historically contextualised
cultural problems.
Invited speakers:
Prof. James Winn, Boston University (Keynote speaker)
Prof. Andrew Walkling, Binghamton University
Prof. Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Syracuse University
It is intended that selected papers will be published
in revised form after the conference as a collection of essays.
GUILDELINES FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS:
Proposals are invited for:
1. Individual papers of 20 minutes’ duration (10 minutes
to be allowed for discussion after each paper).
2. Sessions involving three or four papers on a specified area
commensurate with the theme of the conference, given by different
individuals and lasting not more than one-and-a-half hours, including
discussion.
Any individual may submit one proposal.
Proposals must include the following information:
1. Name
2. Institution
3. Postal Address
4. Telephone number
5. Email address
6. Abstract: not more than 250 words for individual papers; not
more than 500 words for group sessions.
Proposals should be sent via email to: rebecca.herissone@manchester.ac.uk
AND ALSO POSTED OR FAXED to:
Dr Rebecca Herissone
Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama
University of Manchester
Coupland Street
Manchester
M13 9PL
fax: +44 (0)161 275 4994
Informal enquiries are also welcomed and can be
sent by email to Dr Herissone.
ORGANISING COMMITTEE:
Dr Rebecca Herissone, University of Manchester (Convenor)
Dr Alan Howard, University of Manchester
Prof. Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Syracuse University
Prof. Andrew Walkling, Binghamton University
Deadline: 31 January 2008
---
NETWORKS OF DESIGN
2008 Conference of the Design History Society
University College Falmouth
www.networksofdesign.co.uk
3-6 September 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS:
The theme Networks of Design responds to recent academic interest
in the fields of design, technology and the social sciences in
the ‘networks’ of interactions within processes of
knowledge formation. The interest in networks emerges from actor-network
theory (ANT) and the work of, among others, the social theorist
Bruno Latour who, along with the international designer and Droog
collaborator Jurgen Bey, is a keynote speaker at the conference.
Studying networks foregrounds infrastructure, negotiations,
processes, strategies of interconnection, and the heterogeneous
relationships between people and things. Within the wider context
of post-modernism we are, it seems, experiencing a paradigm shift
in design history and this conference offers an opportunity to
address, explore and assess that shift, providing a platform for
international debate and exchange.
Networks can include people, social groups, artefacts,
devices, entities and ideas. Papers will be organised around five
broad themes:
Networks of People including collectives and individuals
Networks of Texts including images, documents, databases
Networks of Technology including mechanical and virtual technologies
Networks of Things including material and technological artefacts
Networks of ideas including theories, disciplines and concepts
(among them design history and ANT)
Proposals for papers are welcome from individuals
and/or panels (of not more than three papers). Please visit the
web site:
www.networksofdesign.co.uk or email Fiona Hackney at
fiona.hackney@falmouth.ac.uk or networksofdesign@falmouth.ac.uk.
Deadline: 25th February 2008
---
REPRESENTING THE EVERYDAY IN AMERICAN VISUAL CULTURE
University of Nottingham, Institute for Research in Visual Culture
(NIRVC)
theeveryday@nottingham.ac.uk
12-13 September 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS
To claim that a work of art represents the everyday is to make
a powerful assertion about what constitutes normative experience.
The structures and rituals of everyday life are thus common points
of reference in attempts to construct and define coherent national
narratives. Calling such constructions into question, various
artistic and cultural practices have privileged accounts and images
of everyday life that seek, simultaneously, to amplify what is
invested in securing representations of everydayness and to puncture
and resist discourses of power. Pointing to the way that particular
aesthetic and formal approaches produce different versions of
the everyday, critical theorists -- Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre,
and Michel de Certeau, for instance -- have made the question
of ethics central to that of representation: whose everyday is
being represented and how are such representations circulated
and consumed?
Across diverse moments and media, the antebellum
genre painters William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham and
Lily Martin Spencer; the magazine illustrators Alice Barber Stephens
and Norman Rockwell; and the Regionalists John Steuart Curry and
Thomas Hart Benton produced images of the American everyday that
were by turns ambiguous, sentimental, celebratory and nationalistic.
Ashcan School paintings of urban poverty, the African-American
domestic sphere delineated by Harlem Renaissance artists and documentary
photographs of the dustbowl challenged and expanded this discourse.
While many of these works pursue a smooth assimilation
of the everyday, the act of representation also distances us from
the everyday, marking it off and making it strange. Artists like
Robert Frank, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and Dan Graham have
exploited this process of estrangement, producing ambivalent or
critical images of everyday American life. Others, including Marcel
Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, have
sought to minimise or negate this division, in sculpture and collage
that incorporate everyday materials or performances that enact
everyday practices. Bringing the mundane into visibility through
its material representation reveals, paradoxically, the extraordinariness
of what is often considered, dismissed, or celebrated as everyday.
We seek proposals that develop or challenge this
account of "Representing the Everyday." Moving between
C19th and C20th, pre- and post-1945, this conference will explore
“Representing the Everyday” as a recurrent, and contested,
concern in American visual culture.
Topics covered might include, but are not limited
to:
Genre Painting – ‘official’ and ambiguous images
of the everyday
Documentary Photography – expanding the sphere of everyday
life
Representations that “makes strange” the everyday
Representations that collapses distinctions between art and the
everyday
Everyday practices in performance art
Everyday materials in collage and sculpture
Critical Theory, everyday life and visual culture
Advertising, illustration and the everyday
The class and/or gender politics of “everyday life”
Everyday life as a transnational category
Send brief CV and 250 word proposals for 20 minute
papers to:
theeveryday@nottingham.ac.uk.
We also welcome panel proposals.
Deadline: 31 March 2008.
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FORTHCOMING CONFERENCES, SYMPOSIA, ETC:
A PASSION FOR BRITISH ART: COLLECTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
16 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JA
Friday 18 January 2008
This one-day conference to be held at the Paul
Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, will discuss issues
related to the collection of the late Paul Mellon (1907-1999),
and the exhibition, ‘An American’s Passion for British
Art. Paul Mellon’s Legacy’, at the Royal Academy of
Arts, London (20 October 2007 - 27 January 2008). Paul Mellon’s
collection, which embraces paintings, watercolours, drawings,
prints, sculptures, rare books and manuscripts is among the finest
of its kind to have been assembled in the twentieth century. Although
it encompasses works from many periods and cultures, at the heart
of the Mellon collection are pictures from the ‘Golden Age’
of British art, from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century.
Among modern private collectors, however, Mr Mellon was not alone
in his appreciation of the merits of the British School, and this
conference aims to set his achievement within the global context
of modern and contemporary collecting.
For details please see our website:
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URBAN BOUNDARIES AND MARGINS
Urban History Group, University of Nottingham
27-28 March 2008
With 35 papers over 12 sessions, this conference
will explore the concept of boundaries and margins in the context
of the city. The theme is interpreted broadly to encompass not
only the identification of various types of boundaries - spatial,
social, cultural, economic and political- but also the processes
that help create, sustain as well as contest the legitimacy and
practices of such boundaries. This focus draws attention to the
differences as well as the similarities between various groups
and activities in the city, and explores how these could change
over time.
A field visit to Southwell, Nottinghamshire, is
planned (pre-booking required) on the morning of Thursday 27 March.
Draft programme and booking:
http://www.le.ac.uk/urbanhist/uhg/conf2008.html
For further details please contact:
Dr David Green (conference organiser)
Department of Geography
King's College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS UK
Tel: +44(0) 207 848 2721
Fax +44(0) 207 848 2287
---
INSTANT CITIES: Emergent Trends in Architecture and Urbanism in
the Arab World
Third International Conference organized by The Center for the
Study of Architecture in the Arab Region (CSAAR) in collaboration
with School of Architecture and Design, American University of
Sharjah
American University of Sharjah, UAE
1-3 April, 2008
Throughout the Arab region, rapid urbanization
fueled by speculation and geopolitical transformations have had
a significant impact on architecture. The flow of people, goods
and capital into the Gulf states has prompted fundamental changes
resulting from economic growth and diversification intended to
lessen the dependence on oil revenues. As a result of its ability
to entice investors and instantly translate funds into real estate
ventures, Dubai has become a prime example and a potential focus
of study. Architects and planners struggle to adapt to processes
of rapid change and there seems to be little time for reflection
on the long-term socio-cultural or environmental consequences
of current practices.
The CSAAR 2008 conference will focus on the causes
and effects of emergent trends in architecture and urbanism in
the Gulf. Media campaigns and journalistic accounts of the extraordinary
projects that promise to increase economic vitality and attract
tourists have focused attention on the region. However, there
have been few attempts to move beyond the descriptive. We have
invited colleagues from across disciplines to develop analyses
that identify, explicate and theorize emergent trends in architecture
and urbanism in the Arab region in general and the Gulf states
in particular. Questions to be considered include: How has economic
progress affected contemporary architecture and urbanism in the
Arab region? What theoretical constructs can be employed to explain
transformations in the built environment? What can be learned
from architecture and urbanism in fast-developing cities like
Dubai? How have inhabitants adapted to the effects of urban development?
For more details, contact the conference website:
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STAGING THE MODERN INTERIOR
The Dorich House Annual Conference #10.
Hosted by the Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC), Kingston
University, London
Thursday 15 - Friday 16 May 2008
The focus of this year's conference will be the
long-standing role of the interior as a 'stage'. Linked to Pierre
Bourdieu's notion of the 'habitus' in which class distinctions
are created, and Judith Butler's concept of 'performativity' through
which gender is constructed, the interior can be seen as a place
in which identities are formed and performed. This view is reinforced
by literary historians such as Victoria Rosner and Diana Fuss
who have stressed the role of 'interiority' in the construction
of modern self-identities. While this definition of the interior
can, on one level, Be applied to any and every inside space, it
Is highlighted in environments created specifically for performance
- theatre sets, film sets and television sets among them. The
conference will address the 'theatrical' or the 'dramatic' interior
both in general terms and in relation to specific spaces created
for performances.
Conference conveners: Professor Penny Sparke, Dr
Trevor Keeble, Brenda Martin, Professor Anne Wealleans, The Modern
Interiors Research Centre (MIRC), Kingston University.
---
ARCHITECTURE AND HOLINESS: BEYOND LITURGY?
Study Afternoon, University of York Research School in Architectural
History and Theory
Wednesday 11 June 2008, 2.00-5.30 p.m.
This Study Afternoon will examine how holiness
might be considered in relation to architecture beyond reducing
architecture to instantiation either of a transcendent universal
or of ecclesiastical hierarchy, liturgy, or doctrine.
The event is free; all welcome. Further information:
Dr Helen Hills, University of York hh508@york.ac.uk
Dr. Helen Hills, Reader in History of Art
Department of History of Art
University of York,
Heslington, York
YO10 5DD
Tel: (0044) (0)1904 43 3428
---
JOURNALS
FOOTPRINT: DELFT SCHOOL OF DESIGN JOURNAL
www.footprintjournal.org
Call for papers: Mapping Urban Complexity in an
Asian Context
Asia in the twenty-first century – what has begun to be
called the 'Pacific Century'. The region's economic, social, political
and cultural changes, wide-ranging in their manifestation and
far reaching in their consequence. All of these factors are inscribed
in the urban environment. In a region where a population of one
million constitutes a small settlement and mega-cities such as
Tokyo and Shanghai have come to dominate the global network, sheer
size is itself an important issue and not just in practical terms.
Then there is the apparent chaos that is actually a delicately
balanced autopoeisis in Jakarta, Bangkok or Mumbai, as well as
the interesting and potentially useful city-state models of Singapore
or Hong Kong. These conditions and rising phenomena bring important
questions on the potentials and relevance of mapping to the fore.
Some interesting article themes might include broader,
or more general, questions on mapping: the map (as a tool or instrument)
versus the 'agency of mapping' (practice, action), i.e. notions
of image and identity; language and 'naming' as a form of claiming
– which is often the result of translation or transliteration
imposed during the colonial era; Post-colonialism and contested
urban spaces; the problem of mapping boundaries, interstitial
and in-between zones; emotive and emotional mapping; etc. And
all these as they relate to questions that focus specifically
on contemporary urban conditions in Asia. For instance: what constitutes
public space, and its usage, in an Asian context?
Potential articles should be in keeping with Footprint's
commitment to critical theoretical analysis, and submissions should
not exceed the following: articles: 6,000-8,000 words; review
articles: 2,000 words; book reviews: 500 words. All articles to
be submitted in English, which may be subject to editing. Please
use link below to read the paper submission guidelines. Thank
you and looking forward to your contributions.
Dr Heidi Sohn and Gregory Bracken (Editors)
Footprint: Delft School of Design Journal
www.footprintjournal.org
editors@footprintjournal.org
Deadline for completed articles: 31st January 2008
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MURPHY: JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THEORY
Murphy is an academic journal of architectural
history and theory published once or twice a year in Portuguese
and English by the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of
Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra and Coimbra
University Press. In particular, Murphy is interested in texts
that contribute to the cross-referencing of architectural and
urban history and theory with art history, the history of science,
the history of culture, anthropology, geography, gender studies,
philosophy and visual studies.
For details, see
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FELLOWSHIPS:
YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART VISITING FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
The Yale Center for British Art offers residential
fellowships ranging from one to four months to scholars undertaking
postdoctoral or equivalent research related to British art. These
fellowships allow scholars of literature, history, the history
of art, and related fields to study the Center's holdings of paintings,
drawings, prints, rare books, and manuscripts. The Center also
offers several pre-doctoral fellowships ranging from one to two
months for graduate students writing doctoral dissertations in
the field of British art. Applicants from North America must be
ABD to qualify.
Fellowships include the cost of travel to and from
New Haven and also provide accommodations and a living allowance.
Recipients are required to be in residence in New Haven and must
be free of all other significant professional responsibilities
during the fellowship period.
One fellowship per annum is reserved for a member of the American
Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. By arrangement with the
Huntington Library, San Marino, California, scholars may apply
separately for tandem awards; every effort will be made to offer
consecutive dates.
Applications for fellowships between July 2008
and June 2009 must reach the YCBA by January 18, 2008, and should
include a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, a statement of 2-3
pages (single-spaced) outlining the proposed research project,
and the preferred month(s) of tenure. Applicants should provide
a title for their research project, and place their name on each
page of the application. Two confidential letters of recommendation
should arrive under separate cover by the same deadline.
For further information, contact Serena Guerrette,
Senior Administrative Assistant, Department of Research, Yale
Center for British Art
(203.432.7192 or:
ycba.research@yale.edu).
Applications should be sent to:
Lisa Ford
Associate Head of Research
Yale Center for British Art
P.O. Box 208280
New Haven, CT 06520-8280
Express mail address:
161 York Street
New Haven, CT 06510
Deadline for applications: 18th January 2008
---
OTHER:
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIETY is keen to make individual contacts
within schools with a view to encouraging staff and student participation
in its activities, such as locally-based research about modern
buildings. The Society would also like to offer occasional guest
lectures by some of its trustees and supporters who are known
for their knowledge of modern buildings in Britain.
Please contact Alan Powers, C20 Chairman,
University of Greenwich:
A.Powers@gre.ac.uk
If you have items of interest you would like to
promote through the newsletter to the AHRA mailing list, please
send details by email to Diana Periton at:
dp_cs@mac.com
The contents of the newsletter will be moderated
according to relevance.
