CALL FOR PAPERS
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Agency of Things:
New Perspectives on European Art of the Fourteenth–Sixteenth Centuries

Conference: 11–12 June 2015
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2014

Co-organized by Institute of History of Art, University of Warsaw
and National Museum in Warsaw

Invited speakers:
  • Prof. Susie Nash (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
  • Prof. Andrew Morrall (The Bard Graduate Center, New York)
  • Prof. Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)
  • Prof. Wim François (KU Leuven)
  • Prof. Elina Gertsman (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland)
  • Prof. Jacqueline E. Jung (Yale University)
  • Dr. Peter Dent (University of Bristol)
  • Dr. Robert Maniura (Birkbeck, University of London)
  • Dr. Kathryn Rudy (University of St Andrews)

    • This two-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to investigate whether agency of things as a new research model more accurately than traditional theories and methods informs our understanding of religious, social, political and ideological systems or networks which shaped various communities (court, city, convent, pilgrim) during the period under investigation.

    All speakers will be invited to visit the newly reopened Gallery of Medieval Art at the National Museum in Warsaw with its curator Professor Antoni Ziemba.

    We invite proposals from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, provided that they present innovative insights into the realm of agency of artistic and non-artistic objects. Acceptable topics may include, but are by no means limited to, the following topics:
  • Scale and size of things as conditions of their agency
  • Physical and sensory agency of things
  • Animated things and things for manual handling
  • Objects actively defining and operating within a space
  • Things used in performances, rituals, recitations and sermons
  • Craftsmanship and its role in agency of things
  • Human subjects in a process of dissemination of objects
  • Emotional and psychological agency of things

    • Papers should be twenty minutes in length and will be followed by a ten-minute Q&A session.
    Please e-mail an abstract of no more than 300 words to Ika Matyjaszkiewicz and Patrycja Misiuda-Ramlau to agencyofthings@uw.edu.pl by 30 November 2014. Along with your abstract please include your name, institution, paper title and a brief biography of no more than 150 words. Successful applicants will be notified by 30 January 2015. The conference proceedings will be published after the event, therefore please indicate whether you would be interested in further developing your paper for a publication.