International Conference: Early Medieval Graphicacy in a Comparative Perspective
University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo
9–10 June, 2016

Conference Website

Organizers: Prof. Ildar Garipzanov and Dr Romy Wyche

This conference is the last of a series for the Graphicacy and Authority in Early Medieval Europe Project. The aim of the project has been to gather scholars from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the increasing role of non-figural graphic devices across a wide range of media, from manuscripts to architecture and mass-produced objects.

Visual communication in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages is conventionally analysed using methods specific to either figural imagery (and visualcy of the past) or literary productions (and literacy). In contrast, our project focuses on non-figural graphic devices which are intermediaries between texts and pictures, and which appear during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The project operates with a working hypothesis that these graphic compositions attest to early graphicacy, which has been defined as a visual mode of communication of conceptual information and abstract ideas by means of non-figural graphic devices, which may comprise inscribed letters, words, or decorative symbols. For a recent discussion of early graphicacy, click here and for more information about the project, please visit our website.

Our previous conferences have examined functions and contextual usage of graphic devices such as monograms, christograms, the staurogram, the sign of the cross and symbolic ornaments on a wide array of material as well as the monogrammatic and decorated initials, graphic symbols, and ornamental designs that appear in early medieval manuscripts. In this closing conference, we would like to include early non-figural graphic devices that are more familiar to specialists in modern graphicacy, namely maps and diagrams.

The objective of this conference is to gather scholars from a wide range of disciplines including but not limited to art history, archaeology and cultural history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the Latin West and Greek East for comparative discussions of early non-figural graphic devices in different media, regions, or chronological periods. We are especially interested in papers dealing with different forms of early graphicacy in a comparative perspective as well as common cognitive mechanisms that enable their deployment in visual communication.

Please submit your proposal (about 300 words) and a short academic CV (no more than a page) at the following link by 1 October, 2015. Places are limited to allow us to subsidise some costs, including registration fee and refreshments. If you have any question please contact Dr Romy Wyche at r.m.wyche@iakh.uio.no.

Adaptation and Dance
One-day conference
Centre for Adaptations, De Montfort University, Leicester
2 March, 2016

Dance productions frequently draw on artistic precedents. Ballet companies rely on classics based on fairy and folk tales but audiences also enjoy an expanding repertoire of works based on a broader range of sources: art – The Green Table, The Rake’s Progress, A Simple Man; the Bible – Job, The Judas Tree, The Prodigal Son; film – Edward Scissorhands; biography – Anastasia, Fall River Legend, Mayerling; children’s literature – The Tales of Beatrix Potter; novels – Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby, Manon, Woolf Works; operas – The Car Man, Madame Butterfly; plays – Edward II, Hobson’s Choice; poetry – Images of Love. Shakespeare has provided inspiration for a large number of dance-makers. These examples signal how across several decades choreographers working globally with a range of companies have produced one-act and full-length pieces for stage and screen.

In recent years there has been growing interest in the analysis of a range of topics connected with adaptation and dance. By bringing together scholars and practitioners, this one-day conference seeks to move away from the dominant focus on film and television in Adaptation Studies and consider the neglected area of dance. Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

• Fairy and folk tale ballet adaptations
• The history of ballet adaptations
• Modern dance and classical ballet interpretations of literary works
• Key choreographers as adaptors
• The idea of the choreographer as ‘auteur’
• Dance adaptations of novels and poems
• Stardom, celebrity and dance adaptations
• Shakespeare and ballet
• Genres of dance adaptation
• The theoretical underpinnings of Adaptation Studies in relation to dance

It is hoped that selected papers will form an edited collection. Proposals (between 50–100 words) and a brief biographical note should be sent to Elinor Parsons (eparsons@dmu.ac.uk) and Hila Shachar (hila.shachar@dmu.ac.uk) by 6 November 2015.

Retail Realms: Shops, Shoppers and Shopping in Eighteenth-Century Britain, c.1680-1830
York Hilton Hotel and Fairfax House
22-23 October, 2015

The eighteenth century was a transformative age for shops and shopping in Britain. Between the late seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries far-reaching changes took place in the ways people shopped, the things they bought, the shops themselves and the ways in which they were run, and the systems of distribution and marketing which made possible the shopping experience.

For an increasing portion of Georgian ‘polite society’, shopping, from being primarily a matter of obtaining the necessities of life, became a pleasurable leisure activity in its own right, associated with sociability, sensory experience, the fashioning of selfhood and the expression of individual and collective identities. Many historians who have explored the social and cultural dynamics of shopping in the eighteenth century have argued that this period saw a ‘consumer revolution’.

Theorisations of eighteenth-century consumerism, however, tend to overlook or disregard the materiality and spatiality of the shopping experience: the Georgian retail realm was not just a social or economic process but a place, located in shops, showrooms, markets and high streets, and extending into the assembly rooms and drawing rooms, and indeed the bedrooms and dressing rooms, of polite society. From the packaging of goods and the display of signs and labels, print advertising and the design of shops, to the increasing prominence of shops in towns and cities and the refashioning of the urban environment around the shopping experience, the retail realm was an increasingly important factor in the physical reshaping of eighteenth-century British life.

This symposium, the third Fairfax House Symposium in Georgian Studies, aims to bring together interested parties from curatorial, conservation, academic and other backgrounds with an interest in the history of shops and shopping to explore the nature and significance of the retail realm in the long eighteenth century. The symposium, which is taking place over two days, will be organised around five broad themes:

• A consumer revolution? The development and transformation of the retail realm in the long eighteenth century.
• Shopping outside the shop. Publicity, marketing, the retail realm interacting with the urban, rural and domestic realms.
• Shopping inside the shop. The design, layout and furnishing of shops, the display of goods, the management of the shopping experience.
• The shopper’s realm. Shopping as a fashionable/leisure pursuit and a social activity, the sensory/haptic dimensions of shopping.
• The retailer’s realm. How retailers perceived shopping and shoppers, new retail arenas and models, the materiality of the retail business.

Proposals are invited for symposium contributions not exceeding 20 minutes in length addressing one or more of the themes identified above. Please send outlines of around 200 words, accompanied by a brief one-paragraph biography, to fairfaxhousesymposium@gmail.com by Friday 31 July 2015. Any queries about the symposium should be sent to the same email address.