AHGSA Announces Fall 2024 Graduate Student Symposium CFP
The University of Illinois Chicago Art History Graduate Student Association (AHGSA) is thrilled to extend an invitation for paper submissions for the upcoming Graduate Student Symposium: A Planetary Art History: Critical Engagement with Boundaries and Land. This symposium seeks to explore conceptions of art history that complicate borders, broaden cultural engagement, and celebrate human creativity on a planet-wide scale.
A Planetary Art History: Critical Engagement with Boundaries and Land challenges us to rethink the traditional boundaries of art history and embrace a planetary vantage point—one that seeks to reconsider many of the structures and ideologies that attempt to divide the planet. We seek to investigate how art evolves and intersects across diverse cultures. Specific questions we are considering include: Can various theoretical frameworks of the planetary enhance art historical perspectives? How does a planetary approach to art history specifically foster critical inclusivity, mutual understanding, and the celebration of our shared humanity?
The Keynote Speaker will be presenting on the position of American Art within a planetary art history. However, submission topics about any and all locations are encouraged, and graduate students working on art/visual culture from around the globe are encouraged to apply. While this detail may place emphasis on the Americas as a space of planetary exchange and diaspora, A Planetary Art History: Critical Engagement with Boundaries and Land looks towards planetary art histories on a global scale.
Some examples of scholars who have engaged with the notion of a planetary art history include Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Griselda Pollock, James Elkins, and Anna Tsing. Environmental theories, post-colonial theories, Global Modernisms, and cultural hybridity are all perspectives that could be applicable to the topic.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
● Critical analysis of maps, cartography, land surveys, etc.
● Engagement with colonial art history as a visual tool of empire and/or nationhood
● Representation and recognition of marginalized voices in global art history
● Diasporic and migratory artistic expression
● Strategies for creating more planetary art historical narratives
● Cultural hybridity and inter-relational influence in art and visual culture
● Artistic responses to climate change and environmental challenges
● Considerations of environmental art and land art
● Art and theories that explore the notion of the Anthropocene—the geological epoch when humans exist as a geological force, severely qualifies Humanist histories of Modernity/Globalization
● Anthropological art histories that explore capitalism, climate change, and/or the collapse of Human History and Natural History
● Creative engagement with the possibilities of a planetary future, such as dystopias/utopias, Afrofuturism, technological advancement, etc.
Submission Guidelines:
We invite graduate students in all fields to submit abstracts for papers that explore the theme of A Planetary Art History: Critical Engagement with Boundaries and Land. Topics are not limited by location or timeframe, and broad interpretations are encouraged. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should be submitted by June 1, 2024 to uicarthistorysymposium@gmail.com, along with a current CV.
Important Dates:
● Abstract Submission Deadline: June 1, 2024
● Notification of Acceptance: Late June, 2024
Contact Information:
For questions and submissions, please email uicarthistorysymposium@gmail.com.