---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Elizabeth Savage" <leu21(a)cam.ac.uk>
Date: Jun 16, 2016 08:50
2017 Association of Art Historians annual conference
Loughborough University, 6-8 April 2017
Call for papers for all-day session
Prints in Books: The Materiality, Art History and Collection of
Illustrations
Convenor: Elizabeth Savage, Cambridge University,
leu21(a)cam.ac.uk
Deadline: 7 Nov 2016
Book illustrations, especially from the hand-press period (1450-1830),
are an
essential but traditionally overlooked source of art historical
information. Although the hierarchies of fine art over popular
art are dissolving and modern disciplinary distinctions between text and
image (or art and book) are giving way to cross-disciplinary and holistic
approaches to printed material, printed images that happen to be inside
books often fall outside the remits of art historical, literary,
bibliographical and material research.
One reason is that practical and academic barriers impede access to the
art
historical information that book illustrations can provide. Due to
incompatible cataloguing standards adopted by libraries and art museums,
researchers can struggle to identify book illustrations across collections.
Cataloguing protocols may reduce hundreds of significant woodcuts in a book
to the single word ‘illustrated’; some world-leading graphic art
digitisation initiatives exclude book illustrations. As the global
digitised corpus expands, will book illustrations be more represented in
print scholarship or will they continue to fall into the gap between art
and book? As material objects and visual resources, should they
be considered bibliographical, art historical or iconographical material?
And how do such classifications influence their interpretation?
This interdisciplinary, all-day session seeks to establish a platform for
discussion about the position of printed book illustrations in graphic art
scholarship. Theoretical and object-based papers related to any aspect of
collecting, cataloguing and interpreting printed book illustrations,
broadly defined, are welcome, as are papers that explore the materiality,
iconography, historiography or art history of pictures printed inside books.
Please email 250-word paper proposals, including your name, affiliation
and email,
to the convenor by 7 Nov 2017. Full proposal guidelines at
http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2017/session25.
With best wishes
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Savage PhD
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre of Material Texts, Faculty of
English
Research Fellow, History of Art
Faculty of English | Cambridge University | 9 West Road | Cambridge
CB3 9DP