The Graduate Visual Culture Association of Queen’s University
Context and Meaning XIX: Hindsight 20/20

We are pleased to announce the 19th annual Context & Meaning Graduate Student Conference, taking place at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, from Friday, January 24th to Saturday, January 25th, 2020. We are seeking proposals for research papers, artworks, and/or participatory projects that address this year’s theme, Hindsight 20/20. The conference will provide an inclusive forum that facilitates multi-disciplinary academic discussion on visual material culture while encompassing an abundant range of topics. Hindsight 20/20 reflects on our engagement with the past and our visions for the future. This conference asks, how do contextualized perspectives influence our understanding of non-linear ways of knowing, and cultural production/output?  

Some potential themes and ideas to consider may include:

  • The relationship between time, art conservation, and changing perspectives (cradle supports, synthetic papers, and fresco removals)
  • Influence of evolving technologies for art, art history and art conservation research and methods (photography, photogrammetry, new media, VHS)
  • Positionality in hindsight: ways of seeing/knowing, shifts in perspective and the period eye, reworked theories, culture, information, politics, the definition of eras, pedagogy 
  • Physical examples of anachronisms within visual culture, such as in The Arts and Craft movement and Gothic Revival
  • How do artistic practices express current and future ways of knowing? Including, but not limited to, appropriating the past to reinventing the future and limitations within periods of production
  • Utopias and the apocalypse (millenarian events, preparing for the future and learning from the past)  
  • Art conservation treatments we would do differently today

We encourage applications from graduate students working in Art History, Art Conservation, Studio Art, Digital Humanities, Cultural Studies, Museum Studies, Religious Studies, Gender Studies, as well as students from other Humanities fields whose research responds to this year’s theme. This conference is open to both historical and contemporary topics. Submissions are welcome from current graduate students, as well as those who have completed their graduate studies within the last year. We seek to assemble a diverse group of scholars in order to foster interdisciplinary discussions. Presenters will be allotted 20 minutes to deliver their ideas, followed by a 10-minute discussion period. 

If you are interested in participating in Context and Meaning XIX, please email an abstract of no more than 300 words with the title of your paper, along with a separate document that includes a 250-word bio, to gvca@queensu.ca. Please ensure that your name and the title of your paper are included in your bio and on your abstract. The deadline to submit an abstract will be Friday, November 15th, 2019.Thank you to all who apply! 

Graduate Student Conference Committee
Abby Berry, Amelia Glancy, Natalie Hume, Madeline Legg, and Tessa Wilson
gvca@queensu.ca   

Graduate Visual Culture Association
Department of Art History and Art Conservation                     
Ontario Hall, Queen’s University
Kingston, ON  K7L 3N6 
Canada