Call for Papers: (Un)Like: Intermedia Portraying Practices, c.1700 to the Present

Image by James Sayers, The Biographers, 1786, British Museum

This one-day workshop on 3 May 2019 seeks to address the different layers of likeness – resemblance, multimediality, appreciation – in portraits and life-writing in Europe since the beginning of the eighteenth century. We welcome studies on established genres but we are particularly interested in papers that explore hybrid, informal or unusual portraying practices while considering their socio-historic implications.

Topics may include:

• 'portraying’ as a multimedia concept
• portraiture negotiations and portraits as negotiations
• the notion of ‘character’ and ‘the self’ in different media
• the role of character sketches, descriptions of persons, and drawings in social interaction and the public sphere
• the ‘good likeness’ and adjacent terms and concepts
• recognition, appreciation, sympathy, affection, or antipathy in discourses on likeness
• reversing concepts: unlikeness, dissimilarity, difference, dislike
• economies of production
• portraiture in paratexts
• publicity, celebrity and portraying

Proposals that draw on materials from the King’s College London/Royal Archives collaboration Georgian Papers Programme are especially welcome.

We look forward to receiving abstracts (c. 300 words) for papers not exceeding 20 minutes or proposals for preformed panels and a brief academic bio by 30 November 2018. Contributors will be notified by December 15, 2018.

Please direct your proposals and any enquiries to pahl@mpib-berlin.mpg.de.