<div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Please see call for papers.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Rachel Mauney</b> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:ramauney@umich.edu">ramauney@umich.edu</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 9:30 AM<br>Subject: Call For Papers - Crafting Place: Visual and Material Practices of Placemaking in the Premodern World<br>To: Rachel Mauney <<a href="mailto:ramauney@umich.edu">ramauney@umich.edu</a>><br></div><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><span id="m_8913737613800268358m_-5092931987245614221gmail-docs-internal-guid-22610cff-7fff-1fe9-fc7d-91d81f85cc9c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Garamond,serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">To whom it may concern, </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Garamond,serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">I hope this finds you well! </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Garamond,serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">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. </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Garamond,serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Warmly,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Garamond,serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Rachel Mauney (Chair of the Graduate Student Symposium Committee)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">____</p><div><br></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Crafting Place: Visual and Material Practices of Placemaking in the Premodern World</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">University of Michigan History of Art Graduate Student Symposium</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Symposium Date: March 28, 2026   |   Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2025</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Keynote Speaker: </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">to be determined</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">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</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">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.</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"> Porcelain elephants produced in Jingdezhen, China, traveled through maritime trade and ended up in Portuguese palaces, Dutch homes, and Iranian chinikhanas.</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"> 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.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">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.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">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 </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBsTV5_-DczbA1SWl3nSA0NMVHb9pB7HHTfZWqVYyBSG9zJw/viewform?usp=share_link&ouid=101793573225678968520" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline">Google Form</span></a><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"> by December 1, 2025</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(17,85,204);background-color:t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