Spain represents a unique and fertile context in which to explore attitudes to the art and culture of the Islamic world. Spain was routinely ‘orientalised’ by northern European cultures in the 19th century, as foreign visitors indulged in oriental reveries when reflecting on Spain’s Islamic past (711–1492) and admiring its ‘Moorish’ remains at the Alhambra palace in Granada, the mosque/cathedral in Cordoba, or the Giralda in Seville. For the Spaniard, however, this Islamic heritage raised potentially disorientating questions about cultural roots and national identity. Spanish attitudes to the Islamic past were further complicated by Spain’s ambivalent relations with the Islamic present in Morocco, ranging from war and conflict (1859–60) to Franco’s recruitment of Moroccans at the start of the Spanish Civil War. This session builds on recent research by historians of art, literature and culture, whose work has revealed that the European discourse on the Islamic world is much more polyphonic than traditional postcolonial theory assumed. The session invites papers that examine 19th- and 20-century visual responses to Spain’s Islamic past and Spain’s nearest ‘Orient’, Morocco, by both Spanish and non-Spanish artists across all media (architecture, fine art, illustrated books, photography, film, fashion etc.). How did artists translate Spain’s Islamic world into visual formats? How was such imagery produced, viewed, and marketed? What were the artistic, ideological, political, and social positions on which visual responses were grounded? How important were they in the formation of broader attitudes to the Islamic world? Email paper propsals to the session convenor(s) by 9 November 2015.
AAH2016 will highlight the diversity, scope and importance of art-historical research and its application today. AAH2016 will engage with current art historical scholarship in exciting and innovative ways, across a range of periods, locations, and media. Academic Sessions will cross disciplinary boundaries. They will, for instance, explore relationships between the visual and the textual, between fashion and art history, between art and architecture, between art and economics, or between art and science. Other sessons will highlight issues of time and periodisation, exploring revivalism, re-enactment, and extinction. Or highlight advancing technologies and media, including video games and cybernetics.
Call for Papers format guidelines
AAH 2016 also presents an opportunity to reflect on nationalism and its conflicts and
contradictions in the past and present, as well as opening the discipline of art history up to broader audiences.
Call for Papers
If you would like to offer a paper, please email the session convenor(s) direct, providing an abstract of a proposed paper of 30 minutes.
Abstracts to be no more than 250 words, and to include your name and institution affiliation (if any).
Deadline for submissions: 9 November 2015
You should receive acknowledgement of receipt of your submission will be within two weeks. Please do not send proposals to the Conference Administrator or the Conference Convenors.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2016/session21