Student Summer Symposium
The Student Summer Symposium is a two-day annual conference of post-graduate research papers which takes place at a different university each year in early Summer.
20 - 21 June 2013
University of Oxford
10.00 - 17.30, Danson Room, Trinity College, Broad St, Oxford OX1 3BH
Book online
Two-day symposium exploring Identity, Construction and Meaning
Keynote Speakers
• Professor Craig Clunas, History of Art, University of Oxford
Identity On and Identity In the Modern Chinese Painting
• Professor Marcia Pointon, Senior Research Professor, Norwich University of the Arts
Casts, Masks and Questions of Identity
• Bob and Roberta Smith’ Artist and Honorary Fellow of Arts, University College Bournemouth
What is an Artist Anyway?
The concept of 'identity' is prolific within the visual arts and in many ways its pertaining issues have shaped the discipline of art history. The biographical approach to reading artists’ work privileged by Vasari in his Lives (1550) has had a lasting influence. The portrait remains an effective medium through which to narrate the historical and contemporary identity of particular institutions and nations, and the art market continues to rely upon authentic attribution. Yet this art history of names remains problematic and by no means comprehensively represents either the discipline of art history or the plural notions of identity that have come to influence it.
During the twentieth century, subjectivity was critiqued and revised: psychoanalysis destabilized the concept of a consistent and whole subject, positioning the self as an illusion of stability and a site of fragmentation; Barthes and Foucault challenged notions of authorship, arguing instead that the reader-viewer be considered in the creation and interpretation of a work. More recently, gender and postcolonial theory has cast light on notions of identity understood as performance and as Otherness, and new technologies, such as the Internet, have altered relations between international communities and provided new platforms for constructing identity.
As art history has increasingly incorporated theories and approaches from other disciplines, how might we characterize art history’s identity as a discipline and to what extent does thinking about notions of identity offer a productive framework for the art historian?
For a full list of papers and more information click here
Registration includes:
• 3 keynote addresses and 14 student papers showcasing new research
• Tour of the Ashmolean Museum with Professor Christopher Brown CBE, Director of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, and curators
• Refreshments over both days and lunch in Trinity College hall on Friday 21 June
Places are limited. Book online
Tickets:
Members £35; Non-Members £45 (Click here to book now)
Convenors: Allison Goudie, Nicola McCartney, Charlotte Stokes, Imogen Wiltshire
Timetable
THURSDAY 20th June
10-10.30 Registration / Morning coffee
10.30-10.45 Welcome address & housekeeping
10:45-13:15- session 1 & Keynote address
13:15-14:15- lunch
14:15-15:15- Keynote address
15:15-15:30- Afternoon coffee/tea break
15:30-17:30- session 2
FRIDAY 21st June
9:15-10:45- session 3
10:45-11:00- Morning coffee/tea break
11:15-12:45- Ashmolean tour with Director
13:00-14:00- Lunch in Trinity College Hall
14:00-16:00- session 4
16:00-16:15- Afternoon coffee/tea break
16:15-17:15- Closing keynote
Previous Summer Symposiums:
Summer Symposium, The Linnean Society and The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 28 -29 June 2012
Summer Symposium, Loughborough University, 1st July 2011
Summer Symposium, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 24 - 25 June 2010
Summer Symposium University of Bristol, June 2009
Summer Symposium, Oxford Brookes & The Asmolean Museum, June 2008 (poster & Programme)
Summer Symposium, University of St Andrews, July 2007
Summer Symposium, University of East Anglia, July 2006
Summer School, Glasgow School of Art, July 2005
Summer School, University of Plymouth, Exeter, July 2004
Summer School, University of Edinburgh, July 2003
Summer School, Essex, July 2002
Summer School, Birmingham, June 2001
Summer School, Reading, July 2000
