Panel at the 2011 Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, 31 March - 2 April, University of Warwick

Ephemera index a category of things the endurance of which was not envisaged, things that in principle history would never know. Ephemera address themselves to the present, live for the moment, take shape,arguably, in performance and primarily engage the senses. Less concerned with the category of "ephemera", with the definitions by which instances, in defiance of their nature, are accessioned in the archive, this session will explore the time, space and modalities of the ephemeral. It will raise questions about the relationship between the ephemeral and modernity (is there a pre-modern ephemeral?), about the ephemeral and Western culture (is the ephemeral a meaningful category outside the West?), about the phenomenology of ephemera (does it privilege sound or touch rather than vision?) and about the ephemeral and the aesthetic (is rubbish art?). How do ephemera help us make sense of the relation between past, present and future time? How are we to take account of the impact of seemingly insignificant, fleeting or infinitesimally small events or objects on much wider processes of historical change? We welcome proposals for papers that consider these issues from a range of historical and geographical perspectives.

Please send your paper proposal (250 words) to the session convenors by 8 November 2010:

Katie Scott, The Courtauld Institute of Art
katie.scott@courtauld.ac.uk

Richard Taws, University College London
richardtaws@gmail.com