The Experience of Child Death in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British and American Visual Culture

This panel will investigate the ways in which visual culture specifically addressed the dead and dying child, and its effect on these two emerging industrialized nations. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: the practice of taking and displaying post mortem photographs; gravestone and cemetery sculpture; domestic sculpture and ornament; children’s book/magazine illustrations; children’s fate in the afterlife; popular prints and postcards; or newspaper/magazine illustrations. Particularly welcome are papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to art and visual culture by linking them to other forms of discourse.

Mary Todd Lincoln and Victoria Regina: The Iconography of Widowhood

This session seeks to explore the Victorian widow and the modes, methods, and venues in which she was imaged and displayed. Possible content areas or topics include but are not limited to: photographs of widows both for private and public consumption, academic representations, postcards and popular prints, newspaper/magazine illustrations, widows remarrying, the “merry widow,” or the fate of the “poor” widow. Particularly welcome are papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to art and visual culture by linking them to other forms of discourse.