CFP: College Art Association, Annual Conference, Chicago, February 12–15, 2020

Deadline for paper proposals, July 23, 2019

Delia A. Cosentino, DePaul University

Barbara E. Mundy, Fordham University

More than any other nation in the Americas, Mexico has confronted the enduring artistic legacy of past eras–be they Zapotec sculptures unearthed in Oaxaca, sorrowing Virgins in side chapels of Baroque churches, or Porfirian-era public monuments–and from this has built narratives about the past. The selection and sequence takes on particular pressure during anniversaries–favored opportunities to think about the shape of time past. Given that the year 2020 marks a set of Mexican anniversaries– the years 1520 (Spanish-Aztec War), 1820 (Independence), and 1920 (Revolution), we invite papers that examine how Greater Mexico’s past has been configured and reconfigured over time through specific assemblages of and/or within objects and artworks. In seeking papers that address a diversity of subject matters and moments across time, we invite reflection on these questions: How do choices of such assemblages by artists, scholars, leaders, and/or patrons reflect and reshape the politics of a given moment? What is the relation between archeological assemblage and art historical narrative? What is the role of the context [or frame]–be it tomb, church, home, or museum–on Mexico’s assembled past?

 Please email your paper proposal, CV & CAA proposal form by July 23, 2019 to dcosent1@depaul.edu and mundy@fordham.edu

You may download the CAA form here: