Appel à contribution : Journal18, Issue #7 (Printemps 2019) — “Animal”.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (French, 1686-1755): Indian Blackbuck, 1739, oil on canvas, 63 3/4 x 50 13/16 inches, Staatliches Museum Schwerin

Type : Appel à contribution.
Date limite de l’appel : 1er avril 2018.

Recently scholars across the humanities have been examining the role animals play in representations across media, cultures, and historical moments. While art historians have begun to turn their attention to animality, the most intensive efforts on the part of humanities scholars have been located in literary disciplines and have tended to embrace activist and theoretically-based approaches. Why has art history been slower than other humanities disciplines to contend with animality? Has art history’s traditional humanistic focus precluded critical and theoretical thinking about animals as more than just symbols and subject matter within visual representation, especially with regard to art made before the nineteenth century? In devising his theory of humanistic art history, for example, Erwin Panofsky enacted a series of exclusions and disavowals that celebrated the uniqueness of human object-making and ideation, with a sharp separation between nature and culture. In response to a history of art that has traditionally celebrated and elevated works of art as the highest of human achievements, animal studies presents a potentially destabilizing challenge: how do animals structure our understanding of what it is to be human?

The Spring 2019 issue for Journal18 seeks contributions from scholars who work at the intersections of art history, visual and material culture, and animal studies. Articles should use the historical frame of the long-eighteenth century (c. 1660–1830) to address the animal as an actor, agent, and formative presence within art’s histories. Contributions might address how the figure of the animal and ideas about animality contest the preeminence of human-based subjectivities that have traditionally (and perhaps necessarily) structured art historical approaches to visual representation. Authors might also ask questions that revolve around the circulation and exchange of animal-based products in the burgeoning global economy of the eighteenth century. Articles that address the unique signifying power of visual representations of animals across media and consider how images depict animals as responsive subjects are equally welcome. Submissions may take the form of an article (up to 6000 words) or a shorter vignette (no more than 2,500 words).

For authors who have their submissions selected, there will be a study day held in New York City in early September 2018, ahead of the due date of October 15, 2018 for completed texts. This will be an opportunity to present research, share ideas, and receive feedback before handing in your final articles. For any contributors unable to travel to New York, we aim to make remote participation possible via weblinks.

Proposals for #7 ANIMAL are now being accepted. Deadline for proposals: 1 April 2018. To submit a proposal, please specify whether you intend to write an article (6,000 words) or a shorter vignette (2,500 words). Send an abstract (200 words) and a brief CV to editor@journal18.org and katherine.s.hornstein@dartmouth.edu.

Issue editor
Katie Hornstein, Dartmouth College