Call for Papers: Material and Narrative Histories

College Art Association, 101st Annual Conference
New York, New York, 2013, February 13 - 16, 2013

Deadline: May 4, 2012

Material and Narrative Histories: Rethinking the Approach to Inventories and Catalogues

This session aims to identify novel, scholarly approaches to inventories and catalogues by exploring the multi-faceted nature of these texts as narratives and as material objects. We understand narrative to include language, rhetoric, argument, and discourse and to exist in both temporal and spatial dimensions as well as socio-historical contexts. Materiality points to the production, physical manifestation, and dissemination of these texts.

Although catalogues and inventories are building blocks for much scholarship in art history (including histories of collecting, museums, the art market, and economic and material histories of art), these texts are often treated as purely empirical sources. The need to re-think the role of these texts in art history is particularly pertinent at this juncture when new modalities of inquiry made possible by digital humanities have fuelled a quest for “data”.

If we recognize these texts as texts, a number of questions arise. What is the role of authorship and who constitutes the author(s)? Who are the additional protagonists involved and how did each contribute? How were these texts developed as multivalent strategies (to celebrate, preserve or disperse collections, to impress, seduce or persuade readers)? How is meaning produced at the linguistic, semantic, rhetorical, visual, and material levels? Are there sufficient commonalities to regard these as texts as genres? If so, how do genre conventions relate to legal/institutional regulations and/or codes of production and how did they evolve? How is the reader understood at the original point of production and in subsequent reception histories?

Such temporal shifts suggest that these texts are potentially instable and dynamic; how does this shape how art historians utilize such documents as evidence in their arguments?

Investigating inventories and catalogues in tandem unveils similarities, differences, and tensions associated with the evolution, production, and circulation of these texts. Moreover, by analyzing these texts together, we can better understand their current and potential roles in the methodologies, and writings of art history, particularly in the digital age.

We believe that a theoretically and methodologically driven approach to these materials can offer a substantial contribution to the field, leading to better understanding of the networks constituted by the words, objects, authors and readers associated with these sources.

Papers may draw on case study examples but should nonetheless explore the larger significance of the material. We are particularly interested in lesser known inventories and catalogues posing unusual problems as well as exploring a diverse breadth of chronological and geographic material.

Session chairs: Anne Helmreich, The Getty Foundation (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)); Francesco Freddolini, Luther College, University of Regina/The Getty Research Institute (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).

Deadline for paper proposals: May 4, 2012.

Please refer to the 2013 Call for Participation (http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/) for full submission details.

Glass, Apple, Daisey

In a recent blog post, I said that Ira Glass could, “learn from Mike Daisey when it comes to telling a story that inspires people to take responsibility.”

I wrote that post right after hearing the ‘This American Life’ broadcast of Mike Daisey being raked over the coals by Ira Glass.

To clarify, Mike Daisey’s show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs managed to get a lethargic and ignorant (not-knowing about Foxconn conditions) audience to suddenly care about where our favorite electronic Apple gizmo come from.

What really bothered me was Ira Glass’ framing of how Daisey was a manipulative liar. By broadcasting the interrogation of Daisey, Glass modeled the way the public should react. It is my feeling that Glass vilified Daisey to cover up his own mistake—which was to broadcast Daisey’s monologue without doing his due diligence.

Was the Daisey episode the first time ‘This American Life’ broadcast a story without fact checking? Perhaps, perhaps not. But people who heard the broadcast completely skipped over Glass’s mistake to instead go directly for Daisey’s jugular. Daisey is now a symbol of all that’s bad in the media and Glass is a truth slayer. 

What made Daisey such an easy target is that he admitted that he lied. Daisey manipulated us purposefully whereas TAL manipulated us accidentally. Glass admitted that he, “should have killed the story,” but he didn’t broadcast a recording of his boss ripping him a new one. Glass was the guy with the power. He was the one with whom we wanted to align ourselves. A lie is obvious and an omission isn’t.

Then ‘This American Life’ spoke to Daisey’s translator. But I don’t expect that Daisey’s translator is going to say anything that makes China look bad. Consider that China is the country where artist Ai Weiwei‘s wife will go to jail if he doesn’t cough up a few million dollars in taxes—because he speaks out against the communist government.

We live in a world where Rush Limbaugh still has a successful career after labeling women ‘sluts’ for using birth control, so it’s probable that Daisey and Glass will both survive and thrive.

The whole situation reminded me of the Yes Men (powerful white men arguing over responsibility and ethics while a group of people in another country suffer oppression).

I still don’t understand how Ira Glass didn’t know if he should feel bad about workers who are coerced into standing on an assembly line 60+ hours a week. Which brings me to my point.

I don’t trust anything anyone says anymore.

How Ira Glass Royally Screwed Mike Daisey

When it comes to telling a story that inspires people to take responsibility, Ira Glass could learn a lesson or two from Mike Daisey.

I saw Mike Daisey’s The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (about Apple’s factory working conditions in China) at the 2010 Time Based Art Festival here in Portland, Oregon. As a result of his emotionally powerful storytelling, I have yet to buy an iPhone.

Recently Mike Daisey performed some of his monologue on the This American Life radio show. Then, ‘This American Life’ retracted the Mike Daisey episode because they found out after the fact that Daisey’s storytelling was not up to their “journalistic standards.”

This American Life then had Daisey back on the show to berate him and discredit him for their mistake! It’s not Daisey’s responsibility to tell Glass that his story shouldn’t be on This American Life. It’s Ira Glass’s responsibility as a journalist to properly fact check before he brings a theater professional on his show and calls it journalism. This American Life failed to do their due diligence and they’re covering their own asses by portraying Mike Daisey as a liar.

Who now gets to bring Ira Glass on the air for an hour to publicly ask him, “What were you thinking? Do you just put people on the air without fact checking first? How many other half-truths have you broadcast? Are you worried that Apple might sue you?”

It’s not wrong for a theater performer to take facts or fiction and weave them into a monologue. Mike Daisey’s live show is powerful. He gets the audience to realize and to care that it’s our money driving the slave labor in China. Meanwhile, after hearing confirmation about factory explosions and employees being forced to work two 12-hour shifts in a row, Ira Glass asked, “Should I feel bad?”

Second European Narrative Therapy Conference 2012

Second European Narrative Therapy Conference 2012
hosted by Narrativ Praksis
August the 15th-17th, 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark

The title of the 2012 conference is Narrative Therapy and Community Work: Narrative Practice - What’s going on?

Keynote speakers include Maggie Carey, Art Fisher, Johnella Bird, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad and more to come.

Following in the tradition of the Inaugural European Conference in Brighton, England in 2009, the conference aims to highlight the multiple dimensions of narrative inquiry in a friendly and collegial environment. The conference is being organized around three tracks: Narratives of the Body, Narrativity in Organisations and StoryMaking and we anticipate that this will contribute to a lively and relevant experience for all participants.

The deadline for submission of proposals is the 1st of March 2012.

Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work. Send your proposal to us at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Feel free to check http://narrativeconference.dk in the coming weeks for more information concerning the conference.

Should you have any questions regarding the Call for Papers, or the conference as a whole, please email us at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Norma Cameron: Cultivating Narrative Intelligence

In this TEDxVictoria video, Norma Cameron looks at the evolution of story. As we evolve into a global community, the skills of a storyteller—cultivating imagination, embracing listening and exercising perceptual agility—are needed more than ever before!