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Please post:
Proposal deadline for these sessions extended until January
1, 2006
CALL FOR PAPERS
Constructions of Death,
Morning, and Memory Conference
October 27-29, 2006
Woodcliff
Sponsored by the WAPACC
Organization
The Experience of Child Death in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
British and American Visual Culture
Chairs: Terri Sabatos,
Lauren Keach Lessing,
For many British and American families during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the death of a child was often the hardest death to
bear. Death was the natural outcome to the end of the life-cycle, not
something that should happen to an innocent who barely had time to draw breath.
Despite advances in public sanitation, hygiene, and medicine, physicians could
do little to halt the course of many infectious diseases. It is little
wonder that child death became a national preoccupation in both countries, as a
variety of texts, from mourning manuals, and governmental blue-books to
academic painting and photography attempted to frame and make sense of this
event. This panel will investigate the ways in which visual culture
specifically addressed the dead and dying child, and its effect on these two
emerging industrialized nations. Possible topics include, but are
not limited to: the practice of taking and displaying post mortem photographs;
gravestone and cemetery sculpture; domestic sculpture and ornament;
children’s book/magazine illustrations; children’s fate in the
afterlife; popular prints and postcards; or newspaper/magazine
illustrations. Particularly welcome are papers that take an interdisciplinary
approach to art and visual culture by linking them to other forms of discourse.
Mary Todd Lincoln and Victoria Regina: The Iconography of
Widowhood
Chairs: Lauren Keach
Lessing,
Terri Sabatos,
The stereotypical image of the Victorian widow is of a veiled woman,
encased in black, obligated by severe rules of etiquette to remain at home
and mourn her loss. In an era with clearly defined gender and social
roles, she seemed to no longer have a place within society. As a widow
she was linked to both the living and the dead -- no longer married, but
neither completely single. Her supposed forced seclusion, and this liminal
position within nineteenth century society, in part, has prompted some modern
scholars to claim that she was “invisible” to her
contemporaries. Yet interestingly, her figure is perhaps the most imaged
one relating to Victorian death ritual, and two of the most well-known women of
the nineteenth century were widows, and frequently depicted in their
widowhood. This session seeks to explore the Victorian widow and the
modes, methods, and venues in which she was imaged and displayed. How did these
images function within Victorian death and mourning rituals? What do they
reveal about the widows themselves and the manner in which widowhood was
envisioned by Victorian society? Possible content areas or topics include
but are not limited to: photographs of widows both for private and public
consumption, academic representations, postcards and popular prints,
newspaper/magazine illustrations, widows remarrying, the “merry
widow,” or the fate of the “poor” widow. Particularly
welcome are papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to art and visual
culture by linking them to other forms of discourse.
Thanks a bunch!
Lauren Lessing
Research Associate in American Art
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
(816) 751-1317
Fax (816) 931-7208