PRE-RAPHAELITISM
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
13–14 September 2013, Oxford
Keynote speakers
Dr Alison Smith (Tate Britain)
Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck)
Context and aims
In the wake of recent major exhibitions and publications such as Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde and The Cambridge Companion to Pre-Raphaelitism, this two-day conference will present new and innovative approaches to the study of Pre-Raphaelitism by bringing together established academics, museum curators and research students. This conference also seeks to examine Pre- Raphaelitism as a bridge between Romanticism and Aestheticism, and to engage with current critical work regarding its relationship to Modernism in literature.
The breadth and diversity of Pre-Raphaelite art, literature and design will be drawn on in order to consider major questions such as: What is Pre-Raphaelitism? Where does the movement begin and end? Who should be included or excluded? What are its major influences, and to what extent has it influenced other artists and movements? How have perceptions of Pre-Raphaelitism changed or remained the same since its nineteenth-century beginnings?
Format and themes
This will be a two-day conference, organized jointly by Professor Christiana Payne and Dr Dinah Roe (Oxford Brookes University), Colin Harrison (Ashmolean Museum) and Dr Alastair Wright (Oxford University). Academic sessions will be held at the Ashmolean Museum (Friday 13 September) and St John’s College (Saturday 14 September). A programme of guided walks and talks around Pre-Raphaelite sites in Oxford will be held on Sunday 15 September.
We invite proposals for papers on all aspects of Pre-Raphaelite work, especially with a crossdisciplinary focus. Papers by current or recently graduated research students are welcome, as well as those by more established scholars. Topics for discussion might include, but are not limited to:
- The interaction of word and image in Pre-Raphaelite painting, writing and design
- Reactions to the exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
- The events of 1848-50, and the original aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
- The importance of science and technology
- International contexts, reception and influences
- Pre-Raphaelitism and religious and intellectual history (for example, the ideas of Carlyle,
- Ruskin, the Oxford Movement)
- The Pre-Raphaelites and Oxford, including new research on paintings and drawings in the
- Ashmolean Museum
- The relationship between painting and photography
- Music in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature
- The Pre-Raphaelites as art and literary critics
- The significance of collectors and patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites
- Women in Pre-Raphaelitism, as objects of representation and/or as artists and writers
- Urban and natural landscapes in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature
- Poetic innovations of the Pre-Raphaelites
- Developments in technique (painting, materials, sculpture and frames)
- The influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on architecture and public space
- Portrayals of Pre-Raphaelites in biography, fiction, film and television
- Print culture and journalism
- The effect of digital culture on the study of Pre-Raphaelitism
Contact us
Professor Christiana Payne, cjepayne@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Dinah Roe, d.roe@brookes.ac.uk
If you are interested in attending as a delegate please email to reserve a place.
Booking details
Conference booking opens in May 2013
Call for papers
Please submit abstracts of 300 words for 20 minute papers with a CV to: Dr Dinah Roe
(d.roe@brookes.ac.uk) and Professor Christiana Payne (cjepayne@brookes. ac.uk) no later
than 31 March 2013.