Atlantic World Arts
Call for Papers
Atlantic World Arts: Collision, Fusion, Re-Vision
An International, Interdisciplinary Conference
Sponsored by the Atlantic World Research Network and The National Folk Festival
7-9 September 2017
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Elliott University Center, School of Music Building, Weatherspoon Art Museum
Featured Speakers:
Fiona Ritchie, National Public Radio (“The Thistle & Shamrock”) Dr. Doug Orr—President Emeritus, Warren Wilson College; Chancellor Emeritus, UNC Asheville Dr. Candace Keller, Michigan State University Dr. Jeff Titon, Brown University
The Atlantic Rim has, since the first Columbian contact, been a great cauldron of artistic exchange and creativity: from the poetic “Tenth Muses” of Anne Bradstreet and Sor Juana de la Cruz “sprung up in America,” to the African-American dances of Josephine Baker in Paris; from the Scotch-Irish fiddlers of Appalachia, to the Art Nouveau splendors of Buenos Aires; from the symphonic jazz of Gershwin, to Picasso’s use of African Fang masks; and from hundreds of Shakespeare festivals across the U. S., to film noir, a quintessentially American genre with a French name. Our Atlantic World Arts conference will bring together varied scholars, artists, and performers from across campus and around the U. S. and the Atlantic.
Celebrating UNCG’s newly configured College of Visual and Performing Arts and Greensboro’s third hosting of the National Folk Festival, we will explore how the music, dance, drama, literature, cinema, and visual arts of Europe, Africa, and the Americas have collided, combined, and re-birthed new and hybrid forms—whether through colonial importation and naturalization, indigenous survivals and imitations, Modern primitivist appropriations, or post-colonial irony. Through keynoters representing varied arts from different continents; campus and community performances and exhibits; and expert panels and paper sessions which bring together multiple disciplines addressing common topics—Atlantic World Arts will explore the relations between concepts of place, time, power, identity, and beauty across and around Columbus’s Ocean Sea.
We invite proposals for papers and full panels in a variety of disciplines, including (but not limited to): art history, broadcast and cinema, dance, fiction and poetry, music history and theory, musicology, photography, religion and homiletics, rhetoric, and theater history. Interdisciplinary panel proposals and papers with an interdisciplinary focus or potential are particularly welcome.
Proposals must be submitted via e-mail attachment. For 15-20-minute papers, send a 250-word titled abstract; for a complete 3-4-person panel, send an overall title and individual 250-word titled abstracts for each paper. Please indicate AWA 2017 in your subject line and include a 1-page CV giving an e-mail and a regular mail address at which you can be reached; and indicate any expected audio-visual needs (including special software needs).
Send submissions for AWA 2017 to: awrn@uncg.edu
Due date for submissions: March 24, 2017
About our Speakers:
--Candace Keller, Associate Professor, African Art, Art History & Visual Culture, Michigan State University—expert on African Photography in the Atlantic World;
--Jeff Titon, Professor of Music, Brown University—expert on the Arts of African-American Preaching;
--Fiona Ritchie, National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Company, “The Thistle & Shamrock,” famed broadcaster of transatlantic Celtic mountain music, speaking in partnership with her co-author
--Doug Orr, President Emeritus, Warren Wilson College, Chancellor Emeritus, UNC Asheville; Co-Founder, the Swannanoa Gathering, co-author with Fiona Ritchie of the NYT bestseller Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia (UNC Press, 2104)
Both Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr speak in partnership with
The National Folk Festival
Other Featured Events include:
The National Folk Festival—in downtown Greensboro, September 8-10, 2017
Duane Cyrus Dance Troupe—Comanche: Hero Complexities: A Transatlantic Dance Concert
Weatherspoon Art Museum—Collision, Fusion, Re-Vision: A Circumatlantic Exhibit
Plus other concerts, readings, performances, and presentations
Presented by UNCG’s Atlantic World Research Network (http://www.uncg.edu/eng/awrn/ ), in partnership with:
The Office of the UNCG Provost; The College of Visual and Performing Arts; The College of Arts and Sciences; The Weatherspoon Art Museum; The Department of Art; The Creative Writing Program in the Department of English; the Department of Media Studies; ArtsGreensboro/17Days; and The National Folk Festival