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Picturing Poverty: Imagery of the Outcast and Marginal in Early Modern Europe (Aberdeen, UK, May 2003)
Tom Nichols
Early Modern Europe (Aberdeen, UK, May 2003)
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PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS
Picturing Poverty: Imagery of the Outcast and Marginal in Early Modern Europe
A TWO DAY CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART, KING'S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
TO BE HELD IN MAY 2003 (DATES TO BE CONFIRMED) Papers are invited for an academic conference devoted to the representation of marginal and outcast social groups in British and European art. The Conference is envisaged as primarily art historical in kind, with a specific focus on visual imagery (of any kind). But
interdisciplinary papers are also welcomed, particularly from scholars working in the area of literary studies and cultural history. The term 'Early Modern' is used merely in a blanket chronological sense: papers are invited on art featuring outcasts and marginal people from any place or period within the broad time frame 1300-1700.
The period 1300-1700 is remarkable for the rapid increase in the number of images of marginals produced in a wider range of media. And while many of these are didactic, satirical or dismissive in tone, others are increasingly complex in their representation, the increase in quantity being matched by a concommitent increase in quality and diversity. The new imageries can be seen against larger historical meta-narratives relating to the growth of the market, the centralisation and
secularisation of European states, and the religious Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Alongside papers dealing with those living beyond the pale of established society, such as 'roguish' beggars, criminals, and the insane, its is hoped the conference will also feature work on those
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frequenting its edges, for example, street hawkers and traders, cardsharps, tricksters, fools, travelling musicians and players. It may also be taken as referring to exiled or vagrant racial groupings (for example, Jews and Gypsies), and to the sick, the incarcerated and those considered as morally depraved: for example, lepers, criminals, madmen, and prostitutes. Papers dealing with the representation of peasants are also welcomed, given that such imagery often overlaps in its concerns and emphases with that devoted to the outcast and liminal.
The conference is intended to bring together scholars whose work may not immediately overlap in terms of its chronology, geography or
methodological approach, but that nonetheless has an underlying affinity in its concern with the social 'underclass'. The conference will aim to provide a clearer understanding of the rapidly expansion of imagery devoted to people living on the edge in what is a key period for their emergence into the field of visual representation.
Proposals for papers (20 minutes in length) should be sent to Dr. Tom Nichols, Department of the History of Art, Powis Gate, King's College, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UG (e-mail: t.nichols@abdn.ac.uk;
telephone enquiries: 01224 273783). Proposals should be no more than 300 words. Closing date: October 1 2002.
Tom Nichols King's College
University of Aberdeen --
Reference:
CFP: Picturing Poverty: Imagery of the Outcast and Marginal in Early Modern Europe (Aberdeen, UK, May 2003). In: ArtHist.net, Jan 22, 2002 (accessed Feb 27, 2022), <https://arthist.net/archive/24794>.
