[Ahs-grads] Fwd: CFP - Memento Mori: Death, Mourning, Decay (April 10th, 2026)

[Iselda Salgado]

Please see attached call for papers.

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From: Visual Studies Conference <ucivisualstudiesconference at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 11:33 AM
Subject: CFP - Memento Mori: Death, Mourning, Decay (April 10th, 2026)
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Good morning,

I hope your year is off to a great start! My name is Hannah Grissom, a
second-year Visual Studies PhD student at the University of California,
Irvine. On behalf of the second-year cohort, we warmly ask that you share
our CFP with your graduate students:


UCI Visual Studies Conference 2026

Call for Papers

Memento Mori: Death, Mourning, Decay

 Presented by the Second-Year Cohort

Abstract Submissions Due:
Friday,  February 13th, 2026

Conference Date:
Friday,  April 10th, 2026

This one-day conference gathers graduate students to present and discuss
topics related to death, mourning, and decay broadly speaking. Above and
beyond the inevitability of our own death, we are confronted with the ever
present image of death from genocide to ecological destruction. In our own
field of Art History, from Ancient to Contemporary, questions of death,
mourning, and decay permeate both visual materiality and constructed
histories. We encourage proposal submissions from current or recent
graduate students (MA, MFA, and PhD) and independent scholars alike whose
work intertwines, augments, interprets, and addresses questions of death,
mourning, decay, and their images. We hope to foster a transdisciplinary
place of learning and are interested in applicants from any background
including, but not limited to, Art History, Visual Studies, English,
Anthropology, Archeology, Comparative Literature, Anthropocene Studies, and
Medical Humanities. Further, we welcome and encourage non-normative
presentations such as, but not limited to, poetry and creative writing,
performance art, and short film.


   -

   Depictions of death and violence
   -

   Memory, monuments, and mourning
   -

   Destructions of societal systems and anarchy
   -

   Death drive, the uncanny, and psychoanalysis
   -

   Death of the art object
   -

       Decay, defacement, destruction
      -

      The archive & conservation
      -

   History writing at the end of the world
   -

   Scientific approaches to death and rebirth
   -

   Eroticism and taboo associated with death
   -

      The macabre, profane, sacrificial
      -

      Handling of corpses and ethics of displaying human remains
      -

   Notions of the body, deterioration, abject
   -

   Death & afterlife as boundary or aporia
   -

   War, genocide, extinction, discplacement
   -

   Rehabilitation as an aspect of death:
   -

      Art therapy and reconstruction



Keynote Speaker: Suzanne Hudson

We are pleased to welcome renowned scholar, critic, and art historian
Suzanne Hudson as our keynote speaker. Suzanne is a Professor of Art
History and Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. Further,
Suzanne was the co-founder of Contemporary Art Think Tank and the Society
of Contemporary Art Historians and has recently served on the Advisory
Board of the Archives of American Art Journal, and as a member of the
editorial board of CAA.Reviews. Currently, Suzanne is the Consortium
Scholar and a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute.
Privileging theory, history, and conventions of painting, Suzanne stakes
her claims in art, art-making, institutional spaces, and spaces of care
across the 19th and 21st century. Adding to an impressive list of
publications, she recently published a groundbreaking volume entitled
Modernism,
Art, Therapy (Yale University Press, 2024) with another forthcoming volume
entitled Art and Psychotherapy (Oxford University Press).

APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/Vf2DRf8NBZuSiyAz6

Potential contributors should submit a CV, an abstract (max 300 words) and
a bio (max 100 words) to the form above. Participants will be notified by
Friday, February 20th.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the organizers at:
UCIVisualStudiesConference at gmail.com
Sincerely,
Second-Year Graduate Students, Visual Studies Program
University of California, Irvine

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