Please note that in order to avoid a conflict with the annual
conference of the Renaissance Society of America, the date for the New
York University graduate student conference, "Power and Image in Early
Modern Europe", has been changed to April 7-8, 2006.

NYU is pleased to announce, however, Deanna Shemek of the University
of California, Santa Cruz, will be delivering the keynote speech.

Please find the current information for the conference posted below.

Kind regards,

Valerie McGuire
Gaoheng Zhang
Jessica Goethals

_________________________________

NYU Call for Papers:

Power and Image in Early Modern Europe

     Guy Debord has argued that "the spectacle inherits all the
weaknesses of the Western project which
undertook to comprehend activity in terms of seeing." In his 1967
study of the role of image and spectacle in
modern societies, The Society of the Spectacle, Debord anticipated
much of the cultural debate that has
predominated in the late twentieth century. Does the growth of the
power of image mirror the development of
modern societies, as Debord maintains, or, alternatively, is the image
capable of autonomy from social and
economic influences? This conference reexamines the exchange between
power and image in the context of
Early Modern Europe.

     How have patrons, artists, and consumers acted upon and reacted
to the image? How do some images
achieve a privileged and even sacred status, while others become
figures of the negative and the "Other"? If
awareness of the power of image in visual and literary culture is tied
to self-consciousness and "modernity,"
how have artists explored the conflict between representation and
essence? Seeing and seeming?

     We encourage participants to address these questions through an
interdisciplinary approach that considers
social, cultural, political, and economic forces in Early Modern
Europe. Possible paper topics include but are not
limited to:

The relationship between political power and the advancement and
censorship of the arts.

The sanctification and de-sanctification of power through "image
awareness" in Renaissance political thought:
the case of Machiavelli and Castiglione.

Idealization of the image: utopia and dystopia.

The images of imitation and emulation: antiquity in Renaissance
culture.

Imperial image in political programs.

The image of the "Other": the minor, marginalized, transgressive and
Orientalism.

Visual and literary portraiture: picturing genders.

The image of the Word: the rise of the vernacular poetry and literacy
in secular societies, and visual culture and
literature (ut pictura poesis).

Brave New Worlds: literary imagination of geography, mapping, and
travels.

The spectacular in baroque music and theater.

The image of the Body: materiality and immateriality in the
construction and presentation of bodies; dressing
and fashioning the self.

The use of figurae in the instruction and communication of theology.

The use of image in the art of memory.

Rhetorical discourse and design of architecture and cityscape: public
space, domestic architecture, and interior
layout; the "ideal city."

The use of optical devices and the technique of perspective in the
paintings.

Astrological vision: Marsilio Ficino's astrological magic and
horoscope; astrological causality.

     The conference will take place on April 7-8, 2006, at the NYU
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. Our keynote
speaker will be Deanna Shemek, professor of Italian and Comparative
Literature at Cowell College, University of
California, Santa Cruz.
     
     Presentations are alloted 20 minutes with additional time for
question and response. Please submit an
anonymous abstract of no more than 250 words by January 15, 2006.
Include a cover letter with the title,
author's name, university affiliation, telephone number, and e-mail
address. All abstracts must be in English or
Italian. Interdisciplinary approaches and fields outside Italian
Studies are encouraged. Submissions are only
accepted from graduate students.

     Please send all abstracts to the conference organizers: Valerie
McGuire, Gaoheng Zhang, and Jessica Goethals, at
igsa.conference_at_nyu.edu .

This conference is cosponsored by: the Italian Graduate Student
Association, the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, the Dean's Office of
Graduate School of Arts and Science, and the Medieval and Renaissance
Center of New York University.

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Received on Fri Dec 16 2005 - 14:11:46 EST