CALL FOR PAPERS – Doctoral seminar
Expanded histories: Ways of narrating in the cultural Cold War
Universitat de Barcelona, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, 19 April 2017.
This doctoral seminal proposes to reflect on the practices of narration developped through the arts during the Cold War period (1947-1991) or in relation to it.
Taking as a starting point the act of narrating or telling stories (storytelling) as a way of activating individual positions on history and take distance from an event in order to illuminate its meaning, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt[1] pointed out, the seminar aims, on the one hand, to examine those forms and processes of narration that were articulated through cultural practices in the context of the Cold War and, on the other hand, to discuss the role of narration as a methodological tool for historiography, which allow to question dominant accounts of this period produced by, and for, the structures of power.
Gathering contributions from the fields of visual arts, literature, documentary and fiction, art criticism, exhibitions, the seminar seeks to confront different ways of thinking, constructing and communicating stories, analyzing their impact on those subjects and objects that carried them out, as well as on critical, curatorial and historiographic readings that incorporated them afterwards.
How is this narrative dimension reflected in Cold War’s artistic production and cultural means? To what extent have these stories disrupted or interrupted official histories? How, from the history of art, can we take these displacements into account and articulate narratives that delve into the complexity of their experience? Are there narrative resources enabling us to address today, from both art and historiography, individual trajectories and their relationships with their social, cultural and political environment?
The seminar is intended as a space of presentation and discussion on ongoing doctoral researches, mainly in the field of art history, however, proposals from other disciplines related to the seminar’s topic subject are welcome.
[1] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998 (1a ed. 1958), 192.
Call for papers
PhD students are invited to submit their proposals for a 20-minutes presentation, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. It is requested to take into account the Cold War’s temporal, sociopolitical and cultural framework.
Among the possible lines of reflection:
– The narrative component of artistic, expositive or critical practices.
– The construction of stories relying on real events or facts (in art or historiography).
– The modes of production and circulation of decentralized, alternative, non-official narratives which question the dominant narrative(s).
– The relationship between individual experience and its sociopolitical context; Action, reaction, inscription of the subject in a given context through art.
– Methodological reflections on the narration of art history and its crossings with other disciplines.
Send a maximum proposal of 400 words with a short biographical note of 150 words, specifying first and last name(s), title of the communication, affiliation and title of the doctoral thesis in progress, to info@modernidadesdescentralizadas.com.
Deadline for the submission of proposals: 6 March 2017.
Direction and coordination: Paula Barreiro López and Juliane Debeusscher.
This seminar is organized in the framework of the project MoDe(s) – Modernidad(es) Descentralizada(s). Arte, política y contracultura en el eje transatlántico durante la Guerra Fría (HAR 2014-53834-P).
