Call for Proposals

Ritual Transformations of Consciousness

We invite proposals for presentations related to the conference series on the Black Sacred Arts that address topics including but not limited to:

• Expanding definitions of ritual consciousness such as trance, transformation, spirit possession, copresence, mediumship, ritual mounting, among others
• Arts, media, and materialities of transformation
• Sacred arts as experienced transnationally and in digital spaces
• Decolonization
• Translating experiences of ritual consciousness, trance, spirit possession, and ecstatic religion
• Embodiment, neurophysiology, and entrainment
• Alternative cartographies and the mapping of Black place-making
• Ritual technologies
• Arts and ritual speech acts, ecstatic utterances, glossolalia, intoned sermons, mystical language(s)
• Visualization, the envisioning of transformation, and iconographies of transcendence
• Sexuality, spirituality, and modalities of transformation
• Perceptions of consciousness and ontologies of “person”-hood
• RTC and the ontological turn
• Ritual practices and folkloric expression

Accepted presenters and performers in attendance will receive an honorarium to help defray the cost of travel to New Haven. In addition, they will be provided hotel accommodations and several meals at the conference.

Format

Abstracts for organized panels as well as individual papers, from advanced graduate students, faculty, and scholars working outside the academy are welcome. Abstracts should be approximately 300 words in length. Individual papers and presentations will be 20 minutes, and organized panels can include 3-4 presenters. When submitting abstracts for an organized panel, please include a panel title and all abstracts together as one submission. We also invite proposals for alternative formats that might incorporate hands-on engagement with artistic and ritual phenomena such as lecture-demonstrations, listening and viewing sessions, and those interested in this mode should describe aspects of format and length in a short abstract. Performers’ abstracts can contain one URL for a multimedia supplement directly related to the presentation.

How to submit abstracts

All abstracts should be submitted by December 1, 2022 at ismconferences.submittable.com(link is external). If you are submitting an organized panel, only the panel organizer or chair should submit a PDF containing the panel title and all abstracts. Anyone submitting an abstract will have to open a free account with Submittable before submitting presentation materials. Be prepared to include the following information when submitting an individual or panel abstract:

• Name
• Email
• Affiliation
• 150-word bio or personal narrative
• Paper or panel title
• Paper or panel abstract

Any questions about the conference or abstract submission can be sent to ismconferences@yale.edu(link sends e-mail).

Timeline

Abstracts due: December 1, 2022

Announcement of decisions for submissions: January 15, 2023

Conference registration opens (for non-presenters) and schedule announced: February 15, 2023

Program Committee

• Melvin Butler, University of Miami
• Ambre Dromgoole, Yale University
• Steven Friedson, University of North Texas
• Elyan Hill, Southern Methodist University
• Dorothea Schulz, University of Münster

The full call for proposals

Call for Proposals

Archival Absences: An Incomplete History of Photography

A photo-historical seminar for doctoral and post-doctoral scholars, organized and led by Tatjana Bartsch (Bibliotheca Hertziana), Elizabeth Otto (University at Buffalo), Johannes Röll (Bibliotheca Hertziana), and Steffen Siegel (Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen)

Supported by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Stiftung, Essen Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History March 20–24, 2023

Deadline: October 20, 2022

Photo-historical research engages a vast array of materials. Scholars working in this field grapple with photographic images of all kinds—from Nicéphore Niépce’s heliographs to the most recent digital imagery. They are attentive to technologies of photographic production and reproduction as well as to the discourses and practices that frame the images. In manifold ways, photo historians can feel lured by the richness of relevant production and tradition. In other words, photography as a medium is not only easily accessed by countless users for many purposes; from a scholarly point of view, it is also a medium that encompasses a mass of researchable resources, a sheer abundance of personal collections and institutional holdings so vast it might even threaten to overwhelm the scholar.

Despite the massive accumulations of diverse material that potentially fall within the purview of histories of photography, such histories can never be considered “completed.” Instead, they are always partial, shaped by researchers’ interests and questions, conscious and unconscious decisions they make and the materials they are able to access. Like the production of photographs themselves, scholars’ work is framed by what Laura Wexler has called a “set of choices” akin to the crops and omissions that delineate the limits of photography’s purported offer of a window into the past. Paradoxically, the most comprehensive photographic collections and archives most clearly reveal not just the excellence of their own holdings, but also the lapses, gaps, exclusions, and oversights within those holdings. Our written approaches to the histories of photography replicate these relationships between what is present and absent, visible and invisible, available and inaccessible, preserved and lost.

These observations are our point of departure for the research seminar titled “Archival Absences: An Incomplete History of Photography.” Following on the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen’s initiative for interdisciplinary seminars on the theory and history of photography—founded with the first seminar in 2019 and, beginning this year, supported by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Stiftung—we are pleased to announce the second such program that invites advanced Ph.D. students and recent post-doctoral scholars to present and discuss their research. With the seminar, we aim to2 develop a focused, multi-disciplinary analysis of the material, institutional, and even personal conditions that shape photo-historical practices of researching, writing, and publishing.

We seek to explore diverse means of knowledge production and methods for probing, mitigating, or bridging archival absences of many kinds. For as much as it is true that photo-historical research can claim an overwhelming opulence of sources, the opposite is always also true: in some cases, the archives’ silences are deafening. We want to delve into the significance of what we do not see, read, and experience, what we do not address, question, and investigate—and the reasons for these absences. We want to query the forces that control the possibility of becoming, being, and remaining present—and, as a corresponding other half of a pendant pair—the power of absence.

Over the past decades, research, especially from feminist and post-colonial perspectives, has offered substantial questions, arguments, and methods for identifying and confronting absences. This research shows the importance of addressing two interrelated lines of questioning: what is missing from the archives, and what is missing in our critical discourses? Drawing on both aspects, we invite applications from emerging scholars who will present new scholarship and, in the context of a week-long seminar, discuss a set of questions that relate to materials and institutions, methods and research fields, canons and historiographies. Among the relevant questions that applicants may wish to consider and that will shape the seminar are:

— What views have photographers captured? What have they missed, and why?

— What logics determine the creation and evolution of archives, analog and digital? How are archives shaped by the epistemic moments of their making, and how do they serve certain histories while betraying others? To what extent do photographers, archivists, or curators rely upon trends, past and present, to shape their photographic inquiries?

— What impacts do disciplinary frames have when it comes to archival care for photo-historical materials and also to scholarly interest? Should we valorize the diverse institutional cultures of presence and absence that prevail in various archives, libraries, and museums?

— How and why do archives select particular materials to collect and thus foster their privileged roles in creating visual histories? How and why do institutions exclude, neglect, or deaccession other materials? What is the impact of objects’ existence in analog or digital formats upon their perceived relevance for scholarly scrutiny?

— Which methods do we pursue when we search the content of an archive? How can we detect, distinguish, and address different types of absences, archival holdings as well as strands of research interests? How do we address the myriad negative spaces that constitute an archive as much as its accessible contents do?

— How do we address the photographic objects, traditions, and indeed entire histories that have been forgotten, damaged, destroyed, suppressed, censored, excluded, vanished, disappeared, or simply lost?

— How do we treat visual objects that, for religious, cultural, or personal reasons, were never intended to be collected or viewed publicly?

— How do we mark the incompleteness of our historiographic work? What theoretical ideas, such as “critical fabulation,” enable us to redress these absences? Can research on archival absences constitute another kind of presence?

— Can photo-historical research practices that address questions of being present or absent serve as role models for other disciplines? Relatedly, how can photo scholars learn from other disciplines grappling with a comparable set of problems?

We welcome proposals from Ph.D. students already in the dissertation phase and recent post-doctoral scholars (maximum of three years since degree) in art history and related disciplines with a strong photo-historical component. The seminar language will be English. All participants will present some aspect of their current research projects, which must relate to the program’s subject matter. Visits to several photographic archives in Rome will be an integral part of the seminar.

The Bibliotheca Hertziana will provide lodging in double rooms and reimburse the incurred expenses for traveling economy class up to 500 euros. In addition, participants will receive a modest daily allowance.

Please upload the following application materials as PDF-documents by October 20, 2022, on https://recruitment.biblhertz.it/position/11042816

— Title and 500-word abstract of the proposed topic (all participants will give a 30-minute formal presentation)

— Brief CV (Maximum 3 pages)

— Brief summary of your dissertation or postdoctoral project

— Names and contact details of two references

Questions and queries may be sent to: fototeca@biblhertz.it

The first seminar was followed by the publication of “Circulating Photographs,” a special issue of History of Photography, vol. 45, issue 1, 2021, co-edited by Antonella Pelizzari and Steffen Siegel: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/thph20/45/1?nav=tocList.

The organizers anticipate selecting a limited number of the 2023 seminar’s final papers for publication in a similar volume.

CHICAGO (June 13, 2022) –– For the past forty years, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association has supported scholars, artists, and museum professionals engaged with the arts of Africa and its diasporas. Today, this professional organization received a prestigious quarter-million-dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation to bolster its organizational structure, providing a strong base for its critical support and advocacy projects.

Geared at capacity building, this grant falls under the Mellon Foundation’s Arts and Culture program, which aims in part to support historically under-resourced organizations and encourage “new structures and organizational models that reflect their holistic approach to social change.” Running from July 2022 through June 2025, this transformative award is the largest grant that ACASA has received in its history.

ACASA President Dr. Peju Layiwola (University of Lagos) notes “We are excited and elated at receiving a Mellon Foundation Grant. This guarantees that the work of the association will continue with renewed vigor, building on the efforts of our founding members and previous boards. This grant gives us hope for the future.”

Grant-Supported Projects

• Hiring a Board Administrator/Project Manager to streamline structural organization; establish archives; and assist in planning and executing the 2024 Triennial Symposium of African Art. A job description and application for this position will be available on ACASA’s website in late July 2022.
• Expanding ACASA’s global membership, with a focus on attracting Africa- and Caribbean-based members
• Producing a free Wiki of Collectors & Dealers of Historical African Arts to address provenance challenges in the field, including restitution efforts.
• Supporting the activities of ACASA’s Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices for North American Museums Holding African Objects (CCRBP) working group.

Please direct inquiries to ACASA President Dr. Peju Layiwola (president@acasaonline.org)

About the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA)

The only professional organization in the United States dedicated to the study of African arts, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) facilitates communication among scholars, teachers, students, artists, museum specialists, collectors, and all others interested in the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora. Founded in 1981–82, ACASA is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. It sponsors the Triennial Symposium on African Art, the premier forum for presenting cutting-edge research on the art of Africa and its Diaspora, presenting awards for the best publications, exhibitions, and leaders in the field. Notable initiatives for promoting the advancement of African art scholarship include a book distribution project to support African and Caribbean museums and libraries, and a publication project that produced the landmark textbook A History of Art in Africa (Pearson Prentice Hall). For more information about the organization, its activities, and its global membership, visit acasaonline.org

Student rates are now 15 USD for undergraduates, and 30 USD for graduate students (MA/PhD).

An ACASA Student Membership lets you…

• Support your interest in African and African diaspora arts
• Connect with colleagues across the globe via our events and Member Directory
• Submit your PhD thesis for the Roy Sieber Dissertation Award (includes cash prize & article-writing mentorship)
• Learn more about the field/share your news in our 3x a year Members Newsletter or via our social media accounts
• Receive discounted rates for the Triennial Symposium on African
• Gain opportunities to participate in ACASA-sponsored panels at major conferences like CAA and ASA  ……and more!

PS. Based in Africa or the Caribbean? Membership is always free

Join ACASA Today

Please share this widely with the students in your life!

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With global membership, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) promotes greater understanding of African material and expressive culture in all its many forms, and encourages contact and collaboration with African and Diaspora artists and scholars.

ACASA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.

Honorarium of $1000 for Hosts

Deadline to Apply: December 1, 2021

Dear Friends:

I am reaching out on behalf of CAA and the National Committee of the History of Art (NCHA) to encourage you to consider serving as a host for the 2022 CAA-Getty International Program. Since it began in 2012, the program has brought 135 scholars to CAA’s annual conferences, from fifty countries located in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. A preconference colloquium on international topics in art history traditionally inaugurates the week of CAA’s annual meeting, kicking off four days of conference sessions, meetings with new colleagues, and visits to museums and galleries. Subsequent to these events, the program has generated many scholarly collaborations, including publications, conferences, and exhibitions.

Now in its 11^th year, the CAA-Getty International Program will bring twelve scholars from seven countries to Chicago for CAA’s upcoming in-person annual conference, February 16-19, 2022. We are eager to identify six hosts to provide a warm welcome to these colleagues.

Each host will receive an honorarium of $1000 for hosting two international colleagues. In return, we ask that each host please:

• Send, by January 11^th, an email to the participants they are hosting to offer help in meeting American colleagues, proposing conference sessions and events, and/or visiting museums/collections of particular interest;
• Attend the welcome dinner on Monday evening, February 14;
• Participate in the preconference colloquium on Tuesday, February 15, at the Chicago Hilton;
• Attend, if possible, the conference session on Thursday morning, February 18, presented by the CAA-Getty alumni, “Can Art History Be Affective? Empathy, Emotion and the Art Historian,” 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (CST) at the Chicago Hilton, and the CAA-NCHA Reception, later in the
• Invite, if applicable, their international colleagues to the business meeting of their affiliated society and introduce him/her/them to colleagues in their

Interested? – Please submit a statement of interest (approximately 250 words) and a short CV to Dr. Cali Buckley, Content Manager: Education & Intellectual Property and Director of the CAA-Getty Program, CAA, at CBuckley@collegeart.org, by Wednesday, December 1, 2021.

CAA and NCHA will review the applications with an eye to finding the strongest matches between hosts and grantees based on academic interests. We will notify all host applicants of final decisions by Friday, December 10^th.

Questions? Please reach out to Dr. Cali Buckley, Content Manager: Education & Intellectual Property and Director of the CAA-Getty Program, CAA, at CBuckley@collegeart.org.

Thank you for your consideration.

We look forward to hearing from you! All best,

Anne Collins Goodyear

Vice President, National Committee for the History of Art Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

President Emerita, College Art Association