Classical Material Culture in the Nineteenth Century - 22-23/11/2018, London (England)

This conference brings together scholars working across a range of disciplines (art history, classics, literature) to discuss the reception of classical material culture in the nineteenth century. It begins on the evening of Thursday 22nd November with a lecture by Holly Trusted, Senior Curator of Sculpture at the V&A on the redesigned cast courts and the following day, speakers discuss the mediation of classical material culture across a range of nineteenth-century cultural production including paintings, photographs, sculpture, book illustrations, and various writing genres including art criticism, theory, the novel and poetry. The conference will ask how writers and artists encountered the materiality of the ancient world. What was the role of reproduction in recreating the antique past? What kind of embodied relationships underpin nineteenth-century engagements with classical material culture? How did the remodelling of ancient histories shape questions of national identity, religion, gender?

FECHA/ DATE/DATA: 22-23/11/2018

LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, London (London, England)

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

INFO: v.mills@bbk.ac.uk

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: Gratis/free/gratuito Aquí/here/qui

PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:

Thursday 22nd November

Holly Trusted (Senior Curator of Sculpture, V&A) ‘Displaying Plaster Casts at the Museum: South Kensington and the Reproduction of Sculpture’ Introduced by Victoria Mills (Birkbeck)

6-7.30 pm followed by drinks

Friday 23rd November

9.30-10.00 Registration

10.00-11.00 Jason Edwards (York) ‘Sodomising Edward Bulwer-Lytton, or Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Last Days of Pompeii’. Introduced by Luisa Calè (Birkbeck)

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-1pm. Panel one: Gendering C19 Classical Material Culture.

Victoria Mills (Birkbeck) ‘Text, image and the sculptural body in Victorian antique fiction’

Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck) ‘Visions of ruin: Volney’s Les ruines and Mary Shelley’s Rome’

Chair: Hilary Fraser, Birkbeck

1pm-2pm Lunch

2-3:30pm Panel two: Sculpture, Reproduction, Aesthetics

Rees Arnott Davies (Birkbeck) ‘‘The most violent enthusiasm’ – Henry Hart Milman’s critique of Winckelmann’s aesthetic experience’.

Rebecca Wade (Leeds Museums and Galleries ) – ‘The Lost Leeds Cast Collection, 1888-1941’

Melissa Gustin (York) ‘American Psychopomp: Harriet Hosmer’s Pompeian Sentinel and Problems with Plaster’

Chair: Carrie Vout, (Cambridge)

3:30-4.00.pm coffee break

4.00-5.00pm: Lindsay Smith (Sussex), ‘Photographers in Athens 1840-1879’. Introduced by Patrizia di Bello (Birkbeck)

5.00-5.45pm – Response panel/discussion: Patrizia di Bello (Birkbeck); Shelley Hales (Bristol); Kate Nichols, (Birmingham); Stefano Evangelista (Oxford)

5.45-7.00 Drinks