[Ahs-grads] Fwd: Call For Papers - Crafting Place: Visual and Material Practices of Placemaking in the Premodern World

[Iselda Salgado]

Please see call for papers.


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Rachel Mauney <ramauney at umich.edu>
Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Subject: Call For Papers - Crafting Place: Visual and Material Practices of
Placemaking in the Premodern World
To: Rachel Mauney <ramauney at umich.edu>


To whom it may concern,

I hope this finds you well!

On behalf of the Graduate Student Symposium Committee from the Department
of History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, I write to you
with a Call For Papers for our Spring 2026 symposium entitled “Crafting
Place: Visual and Material Practices of Placemaking in the Premodern
World.” The symposium will occur on March 28th, 2026 at the University of
Michigan. I kindly ask that you share the following information (reproduced
below and attached to this email for easy distribution) with your graduate
students.

Warmly,

Rachel Mauney (Chair of the Graduate Student Symposium Committee)

____

Crafting Place: Visual and Material Practices of Placemaking in the
Premodern World

University of Michigan History of Art Graduate Student Symposium

Symposium Date: March 28, 2026   |   Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2025

Keynote Speaker: to be determined

While “placemaking” originates in contemporary discourses on urban planning
and community development, scholars across the humanities have begun to
explore how this concept can illuminate the spatial/placial practices of
earlier worlds. In premodern contexts, place was often made not only
through architecture and landscape but also through the movement, use, and
display of portable objects, images, and materials. Pilgrims, for instance,
returned from Jerusalem with lead flasks bearing depictions of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, widely disseminating its infamous visual and
architectural forms. Porcelain elephants produced in Jingdezhen, China,
traveled through maritime trade and ended up in Portuguese palaces, Dutch
homes, and Iranian chinikhanas. While, in the summer triclinium or dining
room of Herculaneum’s House of Neptune and Amphitrite, marine shells,
portraits of aquatic deities, and water features are gathered in a dynamic,
multisensory practice that curates place through material culture. Across
the premodern world materials and visual forms actively constructed a sense
of place through their sensory, cultural, and geographic associations.

This symposium seeks to explore how objects—whether enduring or
ephemeral—participated in the making and unmaking of place in premodern
contexts. We invite papers that engage with theoretical frameworks such as
new materialism, actor-network theory, and ecocriticism to consider the
agency of objects and their various entanglements with human and non-human
actors. How did visual and material practices help define, disrupt, or
reimagine placial experiences? How might we understand place as a
relational and processual formation shaped through the interactions of
people, materials, memories, and meanings? We especially welcome
submissions that address the tensions between materiality and
immateriality; that consider the mobility of objects and materials; that
engage questions of (dis)placement; or that reflect on the politics of
presence and permanence. Through case studies from across global
premodernities, this symposium aims to reconsider the boundaries of place
and the many forces—seen and unseen—that bring it into being.

Abstracts concerning the premodern period from all geographical contexts
are welcome. Submissions will be considered for 20-minute presentations in
English. Please send a title and abstract (300 words or less), through
this Google
Form
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBsTV5_-DczbA1SWl3nSA0NMVHb9pB7HHTfZWqVYyBSG9zJw/viewform?usp=share_link&ouid=101793573225678968520>
by December 1, 2025.

____

With appreciation,

Department of History of Art Graduate Student Symposium Committee

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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