Annual APS Panels at RSA

Every year, the Association of Print Scholars invites thematic proposals for its sponsored session at the Renaissance Society of America conference. APS-sponsored session proposals may be related to any theme of Renaissance and Early Modern printmaking, or any aspect of print scholarship for the era 1300–1700. RSA is a multidisciplinary society, and we especially welcome session proposals that transcend geographic and disciplinary boundaries, as well as those that engage current theoretical interests in historiography, materialism, archival theory, bibliographic studies, or social history.

You do not need to be a member of RSA to submit a session proposal to APS, but all accepted participants must become RSA members for 2025-2026 and register for the conference. Please note that proposing a session or a paper indicates your commitment to attend. Organizers, chairs, and/or co-organizers or co-chairs must be members of APS, however, please note that those currently serving as APS officers, whether elected or appointed, may not submit conference proposals for panels sponsored by the organization during their tenure, although are welcome to participate in the selected panel.

Please note that while RSA permits multi-session panels, APS limits sponsorship to two sessions per panels and prefers single session submissions. Please make sure that your submissions comply with RSA guidelines for word count and format found here. Series of sessions in honor or in memory of an individual scholar are limited to two sessions per honoree. Co-organized sessions are welcome; junior and senior scholars are encouraged to collaborate. Organizers may act as chair(s), or they may elect another scholar to serve this position, as per RSA guidelines.

To propose an APS-sponsored session, please submit your session title (15-word maximum) along with a maximum 300-word abstract describing the topics and issues of printmaking that your session will address. Applicants do not need to propose a full panel of presenters in order to submit a session proposal. Submissions should include a two-page CV for each organizer. In the subject line, please indicate “APS-Sponsored session proposal RSA” and send to rsacoordinator@printscholars.org

The next deadline for panels at RSA 2027 will be updated in early 2026.

APS and print-related panels at RSA 2026

APS is sponsoring two session at the RSA Annual Convention 2026 in San Francisco from February 19–21, 2026. Visit the website for the full conference program.

Session 1: Witchcraft and Magical Knowledge in Early Modern Print Culture
Chair: Sarah Lent Frier, The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

Positioned at the intersection of visual and textual culture, print played a critical role in shaping both imagined and institutional responses to magic, witchcraft, and the occult. Its advent in fifteenth-century Europe enabled the widespread circulation of texts and images concerning magic and witchcraft, ranging from demonological treatises and legal handbooks to illustrated broadsides, sensational pamphlets, and works of art by renowned early modern artists. Far from signaling a “decline” in magical thinking, this proliferation of printed material suggests a redefinition of the boundaries of magic, both as a practice and as a conceptual category. Print culture served simultaneously to document, disseminate, and delimit magical knowledge. It reflected emerging interests in classifying popular beliefs, integrating occult ideas into new natural philosophies, and asserted control over invisible forces through the apparatus of increasingly centralized religious and political authorities. 

Organized in conjunction with the Cunning Folk: Early Modern Witchcraft, Magic, and Occult Knowledge exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center, this panel explores papers that explore how magic, witchcraft, and the occult were represented and contested through print.

Papers:

Seventeenth-Century Italian Printed Culture of Witchcraft: Circulation, Propaganda, and the Exception of the Compendium Maleficarum
– Olivia Garro, Coventry University – The British Museum

The Rhetoric of Fear: Fantasy as an Ideological Tool in Newes from Scotland
– Julie Fox-Horton, East Tennessee State University

Witchcraft, Magic, and the Absurd: Satire in Bruegel’s The Story of the Magician Hermogenes
– Michelle Oing, Pomona College

“Charmes ende belesinge”: The Source of De Gheyn’s Fortune-Tellers and Witches
– Susanne Bartels, Harvard Art Museums

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Session 2: Women Printmakers in the Early Modern World
Chairs: Emanuele Lugli, Stanford University and Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Editor, Print Quarterly

The history of early modern printmaking has long centered on male engravers and publishers, leaving the contributions of women largely overlooked and insufficiently theorized. Yet ongoing archival research and recent scholarship continue to recover names, works, and forms of labor that unsettle the conventional picture of how prints were made, circulated, and valued. Across Europe and beyond, women participated in the world of intaglio and woodcut not only as inheritors of family trades but also as brilliant amateurs or as anonymous contributors to the devotional image economy. This three-part session complicates neat distinctions between art and craft, genius and labor, public and private spheres.

Session 1/3
Thursday, February 19, 2026 
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Hilton San Francisco Union Square – Franciscan Room A – Ballroom Level

Girolama Parasole’s Battles and Collaborations
– Evelyn Lincoln, Brown University

Elisabetta Catanea Parasole “Bergamasca”: A Female Printmaker of Pattern Books for Lace During the Counter-Reformation
– Sara Baccanelli, PhD Candidate in History of Art, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy

Bologna Intagliatrice
– Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University

Session 2/3
Thursday, February 19, 2026
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Hilton San Francisco Union Square – Franciscan Room A – Ballroom Level

On the Slopes of Vesuvius: Teresa Del Po and Scientific Knowledge-Making in Seventeenth-Century Naples
– Alessia Silvi, PhD Student, Stanford University

Teresa del Po (1649–1713) and Representations of Seventeenth-Century Women
– Audrey Lin, Emory University. Art History PhD student

Betwixt Parchment and Print: Teresa del Pò’s Penitent Magdalene at the National Gallery of Art
– Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Session 3/3
Thursday, February 19, 2026
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Hilton San Francisco Union Square – Franciscan Room A – Ballroom Level

Widowhood and Women Printers in Sixteenth-Century France
– Katherine Goertz, Curator/Registrar, Art Collection; Hill Museum & Manuscript Library; Saint John’s University

Beyond the Maîtrise and the Académie Royale: Professional Women Printmakers in Paris after 1660
– Kelsey D. Martin, Private Fine Art Collection

From Obvious to Oblivion: Marritgen Muller’s Pivotal Role in Publishing House De Vergulden Passer Reassessed
– Laurien Van der Werff, Co-Chair Women of the Rijksmuseum and Research Associate Women of the Rijksmuseum and Print Room

Early Women Engravers, Henrietta Koenen, Samuel P. Avery, and First Wave Feminism
– Judith Brodsky, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Rutgers University and Founding Director, the Brodsky Center at PAF

Print-related sessions and papers

* Closer to the conference, this page will be updated with other print-related papers and panels.

For recent APS sponsored panels at RSA please consult the list below:

APS-RSA 2025

APS-RSA 2024

APS-RSA 2023

For any questions or queries about APS at RSA, please contact our RSA Coordinator at rsacoordinator@printscholars.org