Call for Papers | Migrations in Visual Culture. Conference for PhD Students and recent PhD Graduates

The theme of the conference addresses the power and meaning of images and the visual in general in the context of  migration of people, ideas, knowledge, artefacts, art works and symbols through the prism of postcolonial and cultural translation theories, from antiquity to the present. The question involves far more than just art, all the more so because many fields in the humanities and social sciences have in recent times taken the "pictorial turn". Moreover, and especially at this moment in history, any discussion of the power of images and their role in migrations in visual culture is unavoidably also positioned in the context of current changes in global relations as well as in the growing impact of social media. This issue also opens the question of de-territorialisation of images and how, as Walter Benjamin has already indicated, technical reproduction has moved the artwork from its original context. The circulation of images is, of course, as old as civilization itself and crucial in the process of generating multiple facets of their agency in society, their impacting both the individual and the collective habitus and their role in cross-cultural communication. Any aspect of the visual is never simply an expression of one culture but rather part of a process of constructing meaning in a field characterized by similarities as much as by differences. This conference seeks to put these and other issues related to migrations in visual culture at the center of the discussion and to present them from an interdisciplinary point of view.

The international conference is intended for PhD students and recent PhD graduates from different fields of humanities and social sciences, who are hereby invited to participate.

The conference will take place in Belgrade, Serbia, September 8th - 10th 2016

The proposed topics for interdisciplinary discussions are:
1. West Balkans - Migration and Cultural Transfer
2. Migration as Cross-cultural Communication
3. Migration of Ideas and Concepts
4. Migration of Works of Art
5. Migration of Symbols

Proposals should include name, contact information (address, phone
number, e-mail), title of the paper, short CV in English of maximum 200
words and an abstract in English of maximum 400 words.

Submission to : conference.phd2016@gmail.com