Special session "Imaging Natural Disaster in the Renaissance."

Submissions are invited for a session on "Imaging Natural Disaster in the Renaissance " at the South-Central Renaissance Conference  to be held April 27-29 at the University of California-Berkeley.

Texting natural disaster has been the object of much recent research on how the effects, or potential effects, of past extreme events were felt, communicated and socially constructed (see for example: Sophie Chiari ed., The Experience of Disaster in Early Modern English Literature, Routledge (2022); Sandhya Patel & Sophie Chiari, eds., The Writing of Natural Disaster in Europe, 1500–1826: Events in Excess, Palgrave Macmillan (2022); Sara Miglietti & John Morgan, Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World, Routledge (2017);  Havidán Rodríguez,  Enrico L. Quarantelli and Russell R. Dynes, Handbook of Disaster Research, Springer (2007)). In choosing to embrace terminological elasticity and admit of contoured definitions of extreme events, speakers may respond to the floating typologies and semiologies characteristic of the overlapping Renaissance and early modern worlds.

This panel will thus contribute to current conversations by focusing on Imaging Natural Disaster from diverse perspectives comprising representations of, for example, the “raging” elements, floods, storms, extreme cold, drought but also of epidemics and zoonoses.

What was the nature of these Renaissance and early modern European iconographies of extreme events?

How were understandings of vulnerability and resilience crafted in paintings, sketches, engravings, prints, collage, embroidery, tapestry, panels but also in maps and illustrated treatises (medical, geographical, agricultural, nautical), etc.?

Please submit abstracts of 200-300 words along with a short biographical note of about 100 words to sandhya.patel@uca.fr and julie.vanparys_rotondi@uca.fr