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1. Photographing the Imperial Periphery

   This session proposes a comparative investigation into the role of analog and digital photography in the periphery zones of empire.  It seeks to explore past and present modalities of photography in relation to the assertion of state power in regions seen as distant yet central to the imperial project.  The session proposes to engage the themes of orientalism and ethnocentrism through comparative methodologies that engage the past as well as contemporary moment and account for the changes that photography itself has seen in the last twenty years – namely the transition from an analog, print-based medium, to a digital, networked, screen-based medium. The questions of technological advancement and imperial power are to be explored in the context of regions seen as remote, distant, and often peripheral to the imperial center. Please contact Stefka Hristova at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with proposals and/or inquiries by January 10, 2012.

   Comment by Stefka Hristova on Thu, December 15, 2011 at 2:54 pm

    

2. Cross-cultural Relationships and Artistic Production

   This panel seeks papers that investigate the role of cross-cultural relationships in the production of art, literature, film, music, and other creative forms. “Relationships” may be defined broadly, to include friendships, romantic involvements, artistic communities with close personal ties, professional collaborations, etc. How have interracial, transnational, or other forms of cross-cultural partnerships nurtured—or stymied—creative work? How have cross-cultural artistic collaborations challenged or reconstructed racial and national formations as well as aesthetic forms? How do these collaborations deal with asymmetries in power and cultural misunderstandings? In keeping with the 2012 meeting theme “Empire and Resistance,” this panel is particularly interested papers that investigate how cross-cultural relationships or collaborations fostered anti-colonial cultural productions, or, conversely, performed the cultural work of empire-building. 

   Please send a one-page abstract and c.v. to Erin Royston Battat, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by January 3.

   Comment by Erin Royston Battat on Thu, December 15, 2011 at 5:36 pm

    

3. Empire and the Dissonance of Visual Heritage in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Colonial Americas

   I am interested in developing a panel that examines the emergence of the visual culture of heritage practices in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century colonial Americas in relationship to the phenomenon of “dissonance.” David C. Harvey has recently argued that the practice of heritage “is not a thing and does not exist by itself – nor does it imply a movement or a project. Rather, heritage is about the process by which people use the past – a ‘discursive construction’ – with material consequences.” Scholars have increasingly argued that “dissonance” is intrinsic to heritage practice, a phenomenon that Brian Graham, G.J. Ashworth, and J.E. Tunbridge describe as “a discordance or lack of agreement and consistency as to the meaning of heritage.” These findings speak to the multivalence of heritage expressions in late colonial contexts, the presence of multiple contrasting meanings and opposing uses of heritage that mark colonial expressions in the process of becoming signifiers of popular sovereignty and national community. In North America, such expressions as the Tree of Liberty stand out as salient examples, yet a subtler repurposing of the past can be seen in architecture and other forms of visual culture. For instance, I want to present a paper about a civic memorial built for Havana, Cuba’s main public plaza in 1828 to commemorate the site where the city was founded. This work, known as El Templete (The Little Temple), is a small neoclassical building designed to house three academic history paintings narrating the myth of the site. As heritage practice, this memorial constructed a history for the city to serve a nineteenth-century Cuban and Spanish elite whose economic alliances were contingent upon collaboration to control economic and cultural capital. With the Spanish empire in decline, the threat of slave insurrection, and a growing sense of Creole identity, El Templete reveals a “dissonance” between the expression of imperial solidarity and the assertion of the dignity and antiquity of place. Please contact Paul Niell at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with proposals and/or inquiries by Friday, January 6, 2012.

   Comment by Robin Veder on Mon, December 19, 2011 at 10:29 am

    

4. Visualizing Pre-Columbian Civilizations in the Service of Nation-Building in the U.S. and Mexico, 1850-1950

   Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, nationalist and/or imperialist projects in the U.S. and Mexico often involved a vexed process of situating dominant social groups in relation to an indigenous past while excluding an indigenous present. This panel invites recent scholarship addressing this topic that concentrates especially on the way the arts and other visual disciplines have been enlisted to position pre-Columbian civilizations as part of the cultural patrimony of either country (e.g. Tenorio-Trillo 1996).  R. Tripp Evans (2004) and Jesse Lerner (2011) have brought new attention to nineteenth- and twentieth-century depictions of ancient American civilizations in their comparative analyses of European-American cultural imperialism and pan-American modernism, respectively. The present panel adds to this scholarly reconsideration by fostering dialogue across geographical borders and academic disciplines.  Possible topics include: relations between the avant-garde and the academy; relations between art and archaeology; notions of pan-Americanism based on the framing of the indigenous past; uses of pre-Columbian architecture in government buildings, public museums, and other structures associated with the nation; and indigenous efforts to contest acts of historical revisionism in the shaping of national identity.  Proposals (maximum 500 words) should be emailed to Matt Johnston, Art History, Lewis & Clark College (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)), or Breanne Robertson, Art History, University of Maryland (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) no later than Wed., 1/25.

   Comment by mattj on Fri, January 13, 2012 at 2:02 pm

    

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