Submission deadline: 1st September 2009
Event details: 7th November 2009, University of York

Desire is arguably the over-riding consideration in the study of art, for desire acts as the principal motivation in the drive to create, look at, study, collect, covet and possess art objects. On the one hand, desire itself is a formidable impetus for making art. Depicting desirable bodies; representing sexual thought, instincts and experiences; expressions of love, lust and compulsion are all prominent and endlessly recurring themes throughout the history of art. How is desire represented, and what drives artists to represent in the first place? On the other hand, there is the desire to own – either through sight, knowledge or physical acquisition – and this desire is undoubtedly the driving force of the discipline of art history. How collections are formed, what we pay attention to, and the compulsion to look are all indispensable considerations when asking how art history was, and still is being, formed.

The New Voices postgraduate conference, now in its seventh year, is organised by the Student Members’ Committee of the Association of Art Historians. This one-day conference offers an opportunity for postgraduate students to present their research in an informal, supportive and stimulating atmosphere. We seek proposals for papers that examine the notion of desire in all historical periods and critical perspectives, across all mediums.

Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
• Figuring Desirable Bodies: how attraction, sexuality and beauty have been shaped by artistic expression.
• The Role of Love: biographical and/or historical perspectives on how inter-personal relationships have been given representational form.
• The Desire for the Image: perspectives on scopophillia, the compulsion to look, and fixations on images.
• Appropriation as compulsive desire to covet the property of another.
• Collectors and Collections: how has the desire for, and accumulation of, art objects shaped the world’s most prominent collections? And what implication does this have in the field of art history?

We welcome abstracts of 250 words, accompanied with contact details, AAH membership number and affiliated institution. Submissions may only be accepted from existing AAH members; to join please go to www.aah.org.uk/membership/index.php
Submission deadline is 1 September 2009.
Applications should be sent to Suzy Freake at adxsf1@nottingham.ac.uk with ‘New Voices Proposal’ as the email’s subject.
For more information on the AAH, how to join, or the Student Members’ Committee, please see visit www.aah.org.uk