Sponsored by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation Seminar on New York and American Material Culture.

What does it mean to consider visual materials as material culture or to think about material culture as visual? What can these approaches tell us about objects, images, and their relationship in the nineteenth century? While visual culture studies have emphasized the act of seeing as embedded within disciplinary or “scopic” regimes, material culture studies have long analyzed artifacts to understand their expressive function in society. However, this situation has been changing. The convergence of visual and material culture offers the opportunity to consider the possibilities of such a scholarly turn. Participants in this symposium will consider these issues from a variety of fields.

8:30–9am

Breakfast

9–9:05am

Jeffrey L. Collins
Bard Graduate Center
Welcome

9:05–9:15am

David Jaffee
Bard Graduate Center
Introduction

9:15–10:45am

SESSION ONE

Catherine E. Kelly
University of Oklahoma
Chair

Erika Piola
Library Company of Philadelphia
“Making the Invisible Visible: Reading Nineteenth-Century
Raised Printing for the Blind”

Christopher Lukasik
Purdue University
“The Matter of Images: Embellishment, Textual Illustration, and the Literary Annuals of the 1830s and 40s”

10:45–11am

Coffee Break

11am–12:30pm

SESSION TWO

Zara Anishanslin
College of Staten Island, CUNY
Chair

Layla Bermeo
Harvard University; Smithsonian American Art Museum
“War Paintings: The Making and Materiality of Nineteenth
Century Comanche Shields”

Elizabeth Hutchinson
Barnard College, Columbia University
“Framing Catlin’s Indian Gallery”

12:30–1:45pm

Lunch Break

1:45–3:15pm

SESSION THREE

Joshua Brown
Graduate Center, CUNY
Chair

Matthew Fox-Amato
Washington University in St. Louis
“Civil War Iconoclasm”

Annie Rudd
Columbia University
“Posing a Problem: Studio Portraiture, the Objects of Photography, and the Pursuit of Genuine Likeness, 1839-1900”