Graduate Symposium

Graduate Symposium

Transposition involves the movement of people, objects, and ideas from one context to another. The reverberating impacts of such regional and transregional exchanges have shaped artistic expressions, systems of knowledge, and relationships among polities. Recently, scholarship has turned to the object as a material manifestation of cross-cultural, transregional, and imperial encounters. [After]Lives is an interdisciplinary symposium that explores how transposition has materialized throughout history. How are objects changed when they are activated as mediums of encounter? In what ways do makers and users negotiate their positionality between and within societies through objects? How have artists and other creators problematized binary ideas of encounter and exchange in their works? When should adaptations be considered cultural appropriation instead of cross-cultural connectors? Can they be both? What is at stake when materials, artistic techniques, and/or technologies originating from one region are duplicated outside of that region?

Schedule

March 18

Keynote Lecture by Kristel Smentek | 6:00 PM (ET)
  Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Architecture, MIT
"Disorient: Art from China in Eighteenth-Century France"

March 19

Introduction | 9:30 AM (ET)

Session 1 | 9:45 AM – 11:30 AM (ET)

"Living Archaeological Museums: Objects, Displays, Narratives"
 Elisa Bernard, IMT School for Advanced Studies

"Reviewing Ownership of Hittite Heritage in the Republic of Turkey"
 Ipek Bayraktar, International University of Catalunya 

"Every Style is Foreign: The Rediscovery and Reception of Medieval Wall Paintings in Nineteenth-Century Denmark"
 Ronah Sadan, Aarhus University

Lunch Break | 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM (ET)

Session 2 | 1:30 PM – 3:15 PM (ET)

"Playing Seminole Indian: Florida Native Seminole Garments in Settler Performance"
 Amanda Thompson, Bard Graduate Center

"Tender Regards, Old Memories: Temporal Transpositions in Memories of the Homes of Grandma Lewis"
 Emily Schollenberger, Temple University

"Emperor's Treasure: The Social Life of the Yubi Zhiguolun"
 Si Xiao, University of Exeter

Break | 3:15 PM – 3:45 PM (ET)

Session 3 | 3:45 PM – 5:30 PM (ET)

"Translating Spiritual Meaning: The Spolia of the Temple of Artemis Ephesia"
 Vanessa Gillette, University of South Florida

"To Revise the Past: Mexican Palimpsests Before and After the Encounter"
 Hayley Woodward, Tulane University

"A Colony in Birch Bark: Exploring the Indigenous Materialities of Elizabeth Simcoe's Picturesque Landscapes"
 Mairead Horton, National Gallery of Art

Final Remarks | 5:30 PM (ET)

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