CfP: The Place of the Image: Global Connections, Local Affiliations (University of Pittsburgh)

The Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of
Pittsburgh is pleased to announce its 2010 graduate student symposium
entitled “The Place of the Image: Global Connections, Local
Affiliations.” The event will coincide with opening festivities for
the exhibition Ordinary Madness at Carnegie Museum of Art, including a
screening of Harry Smith’s film, “Heaven and Earth Magic” (1957-1962)
with live musical accompaniment. The keynote speaker will be announced
shortly on the symposium website.

The Place of the Image: Global Connections, Local Affiliations
symposium aims to explore the relationship between image and place
across different time periods and geographic locations. This
relationship can be construed in multiple ways: images can reflect
visual producers’ connectivity to place, participate in the
socio•political construction of allegiance to place through the
organization of space and time, and stimulate changes in viewers’
affiliation to place as a result of their local and global
circulation. The place of the image can enhance or undermine its
affective and effective impact; analogously, the image can consolidate
or subvert the power of place.

Topics of possible interest may include, but are not limited to:
• visual culture and globalization, world art, internationalism in the arts
• the migration of images across cultural boundaries and visual media
• commissioning, collecting, and archiving images
• the market and its alternatives
• museums, galleries, and other public and private display contexts
• spectatorship and aesthetic experience
• images as implements of power
• visual culture and the nation
• displacement and dislocation, exile, diasporas
• the social, political, and cultural roles of image makers
• images and sites of ritual
• iconophilia, iconophobia, and iconoclasm
• the place of images in architecture, monuments, and public art
• place and duration
• connectivity to temporary spaces of spectacle
• virtual places in new media
• site-specific visual representations
• the relation between place and non-place
• utopias and dystopias
We encourage paper submissions from graduate students working on
visual culture at all stages of their studies. We also encourage MFA
students to present art projects related to the symposium theme.
Abstracts should be under 300 words. Presentations should not exceed
20 minutes. Please submit abstracts and CVs to

theplaceoftheimage AT gmail.com

by July 15, 2010. Selected speakers will
be notified by August 15, 2010.

Symposium website: http://web.me.com/pitthaa/HAASymposium2010/Welcome.html