Facing America: viewing the face in American art and visual culture

A SAVAnT (Scholars of American Visual Art and Text) symposium,
July 10th 2015, the Eccles Centre, the British Library, Euston Road, NW1 2DB

Programme

8.45-9.00 Welcome, coffee and pastries

9.00-10.40 Panel 1: Presidential Faces
Allison M. Stagg (Technische Universität Berlin), ‘Portraits and Humour: American Politicians in Caricature, 1790-1810’
Emily Casey (Delaware), ‘Facing East: Early Republic Portraits as Sea Painting’
Jennifer Wingate (St Francis College, Brooklyn), ‘Public Faces in Private Spaces: Representations of the Domestic Display of FDR’
Caroline Blinder (Goldsmiths College), ‘Lincoln’s Return: Portraiture and Presidency in John F. Peto’s still life paintings’

10.40-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.15 Keynote: Professor David Peters Corbett (UEA), ‘The Face of Time: Facingness and Absorption in George Caleb Bingham’s River Paintings’

12.15-1.00 Lunch

1.00-2.40 Panel 2: Faces in Progress
Chair: John Fagg (Birmingham)
Max Carocci (The Chelsea College of Arts), ‘Plains Indians Artists Facing the Encounter: Historical Biographical Representations and the Emergence of Realistic Portraiture’
Jacqueline Fear-Segal (UEA), ‘Faces without Features: pictographs and portraits in Plains Indian Art’
Barnaby Haran (Hull), ‘Performing Piatiletka: Margaret Bourke-White’s Portraits of Soviet Workers on the Five-Year Plan’
Jody Patterson (Plymouth), ‘Facing the Past / Looking to the Future: The lessons of American Art and Culture and Mid-Century’
2.40-3.00 Afternoon break

3.00-4.40 Panel 3: Facing the Now
Chair – Catherine Gander (Queens, Belfast)
Rebecca Harding (Sussex), ‘The Static Face: Reading Don DeLillo’s Interactions with Photography’
Zara Dinnen (Birmingham) and Sam McBean (QMUL), ‘New Media Face Culture, Cinematic Affect and the Recent Films of Scarlett Johansson’
Fiona Anderson (Edinburgh), ‘Mighty Real: Art, AIDS and Retroviral Memory in the work of Robert Blanchon’
Jessie Robertson (Courtauld), ‘Reclaiming the Face: A Politics of Opacity After Surveillance’

5.00-6.15 Keynote: Professor Celeste-Marie Bernier (Nottingham), ‘“A Faithful Representation”: A History of African Diasporic Portraitures’

6.15 Closing Remarks and wine reception Joanna Pawlik, Doug Haynes.