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symposium |
graduate symposium
CALL FOR PAPERS
University of California, Santa Barbara
The graduate students in the Department of History of Art & Architecture, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are pleased to announce the forthcoming conference, “Mythical Geographies,” which will take place on Friday, May 5, 2006. We welcome critical and creative projects that employ interdisciplinary approaches to art and architectural history. We also welcome projects that are not in traditional paper form, such as film, performance, art, etc.
Our keynote speaker this year will be Dell Upton, Professor of Architectural History and Anthropology at the University of Virginia.
Please send a proposal of up to 300 words, with c.v., by March 15, 2006, to jessica_ambler@umail.ucsb.edu . Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes, not including Q&A. Travel funds are not available.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the end of March.
Time and Location: Marine Sciences Auditorium, 8:00AM - 4:00PM, Friday, May 5, 2006,
University of California, Santa Barbara
“Semiology has taught us that myth has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal… If our society is objectively the privileged field of mythical significations, it is because formally myth is the appropriate instrument for the ideological inversion which defines this society.” -Roland Barthes
The purpose of this symposium is to examine
- The role of art and architectural historians, artists, and curators in creating and negotiating myths;
- How myths allow us to “manage” the past but also the present, in that we use images and words to resolve real world problems symbolically;
- How myths resolve the inexplicable, the inevitable, and the unjustifiable and how they work to produce a usable past.
Some questions to consider are
- How have art and architecture contributed to the making of mythic spaces, entities, and imaginations?
- Which myths are discarded, which are perpetuated, and to what end?
- What is at stake in our myth making and exploding?
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- political and imperial motivations behind the creation of mythical geographies and nationalities or national identities;
