This panel seeks to investigate the racialized dimensions of print and printmaking. The medium has played a central role in the ideological founding of “race” and its hierarchies through visual representation. However, print’s materials, processes, and the language we use to describe them interface with conceptions of race in ways that require further study. For example, the term “stereotype” originated in the printing trade but has since evolved to mean an oversimplified general idea, often with pejorative racial connotations; the invention of chromolithography in the nineteenth century offered a more nuanced way of representing skin tones but simultaneously enabled the increased circulation of racist imagery; the rabid appreciation and collection of Japanese prints in the West altered artistic production globally while idealizing Eastern cultures; anthropological sketches and watercolor studies of native peoples were routinely translated to print, widely reproduced, and used as tools of imperialism and colonialism. Contemporary artists have responded to these historical issues: for instance, Glenn Ligon used the trope of a fugitive slave ad in his Runaways series (1993). Inviting papers related to these and other case studies, this session will consider how print and its study has implicitly upheld, revised, or challenged social constructions of race (including whiteness). This panel is geographically and chronologically open and will put mass images, fine prints, and bibliography from all periods in conversation to understand the medium’s material relationship to race on a global, transhistorical scale.

INSTRUCTIONS TO SUBMIT PAPERS/PROJECTS TO SESSION CHAIRS -------

Email the following directly to session chair(s) at miche355@umn.edu:

1. Completed session participation proposal form, (editable PDF, next page). Make sure your name appears EXACTLY as you would like it listed in the conference program and conference
website.
2. Paper/project abstract: maximum 250 words, as a single paragraph MS Word Document. Make sure your title and abstract appear EXACTLY as you would like them published in the conference program, Abstracts 2019, and the CAA website.
3. Email explaining your interest in the session, expertise in the topic, and availability during the conference.
4. A shortened CV (close to 2 pages)
5. (Optional) Documentation of work when appropriate, (as PDF) especially for sessions in which artists might discuss their own practice.

Panel Organizer ------------

Christina Michelon is a Luce /ACLS Fellow in American Art and a PhD Candidate in Art History at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where she is completing her dissertation “Interior Impressions: Printed Material in the Nineteenth-Century American Home.” Her work has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, the Winterthur Museum & Library, the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Chipstone Foundation.

*View more information on how to apply via 'External Link' below.