Please join the Association of Print Scholars for "The Graphic Conscience", the APS-sponsored session convening at the 2021 CAA Annual Conference in New York.

“The Graphic Conscience” calls for papers addressing transhistorical and transnational case studies of print as a tool for raising public consciousness. This session critically considers the ethics of print, inherent in the medium’s daily use-value beyond its function as a rarified fine-art object in a museum. Democratic in nature, print communicates through text and/or image as well as through its multiplicity. In considering the “graphic conscience” – or the social responsibility – of print, this session will celebrate the medium’s impacts on everyday life. The framework for this session responds to the thesis of the 2011 publication Philagrafika: The Graphic Unconscious, which reflected on the formal characteristics of print and argued for its assimilation within art at large. Papers can address a wide range of art historical as well as visual and material culture examples, including but not limited to Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses of 1517; the seventeenth century etchings of Jacques Callot’s Les Grandes Misères de la guerre; the didactic agitprop of Taller de Gráfica Popular in late 1930s Mexico; and the commercially-produced postcards mailed to Americans by the Centers for Disease Control in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Prints of all techniques – from Renaissance woodblocks to contemporary risograph zines – are eligible. Papers engaging post-colonial critique and/or topics from outside North America and Europe are strongly encouraged. Practice-based papers by artists, giving us a perspective from inside the studio or printshop, are particularly welcomed.

Session Chair:
Ksenia Nouril, PhD, Jensen Bryan Curator, The Print Center, Philadelphia

Presentations:
"Conscience and the Market: Frans Hogenberg's Current Events Prints and their Legacy"
Thomas Brown

"The Violence of the Cut: Wood Engraving, Illustrated Newspapers, and the Rendering of Civil War Atrocity"
Anne Strachan Cross, University of Delaware

"Graphic Solidarity: Krakow's Antibiennale of 1984"
Wiktor Komorowski, The Courtauld Institute of Art

"Re-Telling the Story: A Collaboration with Alberta Whittle"
Sandra De Rycker

"Expanding the Boundaries of Printmaking: Nuria Montiel’s Imprenta móvil (Mobile Press)"
Alberto McKelligan Hernandez

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information about attending this online session.