CALL FOR PAPERS
We are currently accepting abstract submission for the 5th Annual Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium, hosted by the  Department of Art and the Graduate Union of the Students of Art at the University of Toronto.
The Art of Passage: Transnational Encounters and the Convergence of Cultures: A Symposium exploring how cultural interactions and artistic migrations have shaped the growth of art and art history.
Friday March 9th, 2018
East Common Room Hart House
7 Hart House Circle
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Keynote Address: Professor Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University
The transnational dimension of cultural transformation – migration, diaspora, displacement, relocation – makes the process of cultural translation a complex form of signification.
– Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture
Concepts such as influence, originality, hybridity, and authenticity have long come to shape our perception and understanding of art history. While much of the discipline was shaped by the search for specific identities, typologies, or styles, artistic transformations brought about by intercultural exchanges and transnational interactions in diverse parts of the world throughout the history of art, have forced us to reassess seemingly fixed borders and to reconsider the mobility of art history.
Considering the expansive definition of “passage,” this symposium hopes to contribute to the increasingly robust scholarship that seeks to rehabilitate, reveal, and interrogate the formative role that intercultural encounters have had on the history of art. We encourage submissions from students and scholars employing interdisciplinary approaches in the context of visual culture from antiquity to the present.
Potential paper topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Colonialism and postcolonial perspectives
  • Cultural exchange through artistic movements, techniques, methods, etc.
  • Exiles, networking, and circulations of ideas
  • Transnationalism and its impact on local traditions
  • Nationalism, independence, and globalization
  • Cosmopolitanism vs tradition
  • Dislocation in the shaping of art in and beyond the “margins”
  • The effect of globalism on art and art history
  • Migrations and utopias
  • “Hybridity,” “mimicry,” and artistic practices
  • Art and ideologies
  • Art beyond the Western canon

Presentations should be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by a 10-minute question and answer session for each presentation. Selected presentations will be chosen for publication in the University of Toronto Art Journal, an online publication of the symposium proceedings. For more information, please visit: https://gustasymposium.wordpress.com/. Please submit an abstract (.doc/.docx/.pdf) of no more than 300 words to the Graduate Students of Art at gustasymposium@gmail.com by Friday, December 22, 2017 at 5:00 pm EST. Participants will be notified by email by the middle of January.
With appreciation,
Rachel Dewan and Marina Dumont-Gauthier
Co-Chairs of the 5th Annual Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium