CALL FOR PAPERS

Historically, the action of beholding is linked to spectatorship and theatricality in viewing. In the scene of beholding, one is often captivated by the image before which one is placed. The viewer reacts to the image and this reaction has political implications. Beholding also carries with it elements of debt, duty, and responsibility. Often the beholder of violence is placed in a precarious position with regard to aesthetic and ethical questions.

This conference takes as its point of departure the beholder of violence in medieval and early modern culture. We see seek papers that consider how images, texts and performances promoted, supported or helped negotiate real or imagined violence during the era and consider how certain types of artistic or literary production may be viewed as a response to collective cultural attitudes and customs. Scholarship that engages contemporary theory and issues of audience reception are particularly encouraged, as is interdisciplinarity.

Topics for submission may address (but are not limited to) such issues as:

• What new methods can we employ to examine the beholder's perspective?
• Is there such a thing called the "period eye" or an acculturated gaze of the viewer?
• What is the relation between the representation and the reception of violent content in art and literature in the medieval and early modern era?
• How does the artistic object contribute to subject formation in culture?
• How do violence and pleasure intersect within the visual and literary arts?
• How can the uses of violence in cultural representation serve as means of knowing the past and as means of understanding and potentially altering the present?
• How have cultures in conflict turned to art and literature as tools for constructing community?

These are some of the questions that motivate this conference. We hope to hear your ideas as well as to develop new questions that are catalyzing your work.

To be considered for the program, please send an abstract of the paper (300 words
maximum) and a current c.v. (including email address and phone number) by Friday August
31, 2007.

Dr. Allie Terry Division of Art History 1000 Fine Arts Center Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, Ohio 43403

or

Dr. Erin Felicia Labbie Department of English 420 East Hall Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, Ohio 43403

Decisions for the selection of papers to be included in the program will be made by October 1, 2007. All inquiries may be sent via email to alterry_at_bgsu.edu or labbie_at_bgsu.edu.