We are pleased to announce the twenty-fourth annual Context and Meaning Graduate Student Conference, hosted by the Queen’s University Department of Art History and Art Conservation in Kingston, Ontario. This two-day conference will be in-person on Friday, February 28th and Saturday, March 1st, 2025.
Beginnings are messy. How do we start to tell the history of an artwork, a field, an object, or a phenomenon? Tracing the beginning of histories can reveal inconsistencies in the constructions of canons and problematize issues in the field. Studying the beginnings of fields or the early collecting practices of museums illustrates the complexities of trying to establish something new. Terms such as pioneering, discovery, or origins denote beginnings and are freighted with layers of meaning. Many such terms, like trailblazing and spearheading, imply the extractive processes inherent to narrating history and its foundations. But beginning can alternatively be more positive: creating, growing, caring, and building something anew.
By choosing the theme “Beginnings” for the twenty-fourth annual Context and Meaning conference, the Graduate Visual Culture Association at Queen’s University aims to stimulate discussions about how institutions, fields, and styles are formed, how artists visualize rites of passage in their work, and how beginnings can involve processes of both care and harm.
Some potential topics that we hope to explore include, but are by no means limited to:
– Historiography— the establishment or codification of a “new” academic field (ex: African Art, Craft, Photography, Visual Culture Studies, Design History, Contemporary Art)
– Motherhood, adulthood, growing pains, birth and other rites of passage in art and material culture.
– Migration, exile, and beginning anew due to political, social, or economic circumstances in art and material culture.
– The beginnings of an artwork or object (materials and making, technical art history, the conservation of cultural materials)
– Foundations of artistic movements and figures who are left out of the canon
– The early collecting practices of a museum or cultural institution
Context and Meaning XXIV intends to provide an inclusive forum for multi-disciplinary academic discussion on visual and material culture. We encourage submissions from graduate students and scholars with a broad range of backgrounds and approaches whose research employs visual and material culture in ruminating on the themes of beginning. Submissions are welcome from current graduate students, as well as from those who have completed their graduate studies within the last two years. We seek to assemble a diverse group of scholars to foster interdisciplinary discussions.
If you are interested in participating in Context and Meaning XXIV, please visit www.gvca.ca/context-and-meaning to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words with the title of your paper and a 150-word bio. Each presenter will be asked to deliver a 15-minute presentation that will be followed by a panel discussion period. The deadline to submit an abstract is Friday, November 15th, 2024. Thank you to all who apply!
Daria Murphy & Alana Batten
Conference Co-Chairs
Context & Meaning XXIV
contextandmeaning@queensu.ca
Graduate Visual Culture Association
Department of Art History and Art Conservation
Ontario Hall, Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada
