Submit your paper for consideration for this session at the Renaissance Society of America's annual meeting in Boston March 20-22.
Session Abstract:
Early modern streets were often dirty, tight, winding, irregular spaces that served as loci of pageantry, commerce, veneration and even the occasional bloodbath. They facilitated essential navigation between spaces and resources via their networked capillarity, but this utility was often informed–and even transformed–by a plethora of media that included graffiti, signage and texts, painted facades, apotropaic figures or symbols, sculpted shrines, and commemorative markers. Such accretions would command radically different levels of engagement depending on the viewer, but their semiotic powers broadcast myriad messages, from simple wayfinding, to political and religious allegiances, to cultural critiques. This panel considers how such street art complicates traditional notions of early modern architecture and urbanism—with which it exists in interdependence—and warrants consideration as a category worthy of its own attention and approaches. In addition to probing these street-centered intersections of art history and urbanism, this panel also questions what theoretical frameworks, practical approaches, or even digital applications, best serve the complicated subject of urban scenography.
This RSA 2025 session (or sessions) will be organized by Anna Swartwood House, Alexis Culotta, and Nick Camerlenghi. To be considered please submit a paper title (15-word maximum) and abstract (200-word maximum) to nicola.m.camerlenghi@dartmouth.edu by July 21, 2024.
