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CIHA Lyon, June 25 2024

This session contributes to current debates about climate change that are at the forefront of public and academic discourse by re-assessing the intersections of global mobility, environmental change, and artistic invention before the advent of the modern era. It investigates how the global escalation of environmental degradation generated the creation of green worlds in the early modern period (ca. 1492-1700). Papers will explore aspects of the real and imaginary green worlds of early modernity. Green worlds are human-made environments. They are created by practices like gardening, engineering, agriculture, deforestation, and land reclamation; they are also fabricated in the fictive worlds of painting, performance, theatre, and poetry. A green world is a second world; it is a controlled space that transforms matter and thus vies with nature in shaping artfully designed settings. The focus of the session will be on the role of visual imagery, built environments, and material artefacts that advance new understandings of the world as a human-made invention. We aim to take up questions raised by ecocritical and anti-colonial approaches to art and art history and to be particularly attentive to the power dynamics that occur in various modes of engagement with matter and materiality. We are especially interested in exploring the tension between the creation and destruction of green worlds. We encourage papers that foreground the social justice issues raised by worldmaking processes. Of importance is how early modern worldmaking occurred in tandem with the human and environmental devastation unleashed by increasing global mobility, which facilitated the brutal exploitation and extermination of people and natural resources worldwide.​​

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June 25, 2024, 2-3:30 PM: 

"Making Green Worlds (ca. 1492-1700) 1/2"

       Session Organizers: Bronwen Wilson and Angela Vanhaelen

       Session Chair: Annelies Verellen

Speakers: ​

  • James Pilgrim - Jacopo Bassano: Bodies and Grounds

  • Ana Paula Dos Santos Salvat- Colonization, environmental change and the image of the city: the transformation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan into Mexico City in the 16th century

  • Elisa Antonietta Daniele - Seawaters on the Alps: Blue Mimesis at the Savoy Court (1611-1660)

  • Alpaslan Fener, Esra Fener - Terrestrial Paradise on Paper: The Symbolism of Garden in the Illuminations of the Timurid Manuscripts

June 25, 2024, 4-5:30 PM: 

"Making Green Worlds (ca. 1492-1700) 2/2"

       Session Organizers: Bronwen Wilson and Angela Vanhaelen

       Session Chair: Annelies Verellen

Speakers: 

  • David Bardeen - Harvest, Rot, Blood: Rethinking the Tree Stump in Italian Painting, 1450-153

  • Nerian Teixeira De Macedo De Lima - Le Char à Boeuf : bovins, colonisation et écosystème au Brésil

  • Erin Wrightson - Forest Mappings: Brazilwood Extraction and Indigenous Knowledge in 16th-century Brazil

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