Date: November 19th 2008

Call for Papers
TRANSNATIONALISM AND VISUAL CULTURE IN BRITAIN: ÉMIGRÉS AND MIGRANTS
1933 TO 1956
9-11 September 2009
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2008
Keynotes:

Dr Marian Malet
(Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of
London)

Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta
(Synema - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, Vienna)

Historically British visual culture has been shaped by trans-cultural
cooperation, exiles, émigrés and migrant workers. Besides multi-
faceted collaboration across geographical and cultural boundaries, the
political situation in the mid-twentieth century in continental Europe
prompted various migration movements. Many professionals, artists and
intellectuals left their home countries as a response to the
establishment of totalitarian regimes first by Italian, German and
Spanish fascists and later by communists in central and Eastern
Europe. Others arrived in Britain almost by chance – caught out by war
or redrawn national boundaries. To a significant number Britain
offered a new – often permanent – home. Among the large group of
émigrés who helped to change the face of visual culture in Britain
were film producers such as Alexander Korda, art historians such as
Nikolaus Pevsner, filmmakers such as Karel Reisz and Lotte Reiniger,
ceramic designers such as Grete Loebenstein and Agnete Hoy, architects
such as Walter Gropius and Erich Mendelsohn, avant-garde artists such
as László Moholy-Naghy, and photographers such as Bill Brandt.

This international and interdisciplinary conference looks at the cross-
fertilisation and trans-national contact of British visual culture
from the year the Nazis seized power in 1933 to the uprising in
Hungary in 1956. Its wide focus invites papers on the avant-garde as
well as on popular culture, centres of immigration as well as
marginalised communities.

Presentations may feature analyses of individual émigrés, trajectories
of migrants, specific studies of cross-cultural contacts, specific
artefacts, schools of thought and theory, places of migration and
trans-national cultural life, film, photography, material visual
culture, fashion, journalism, television, architecture, academic life,
the avant-garde, design, race, gender, national identities, etc.

Topics of trans-national aspects of visual culture in Britain not
included in the above list are also welcome. Panel proposals are also
welcome but we ask each presenter to submit his or her own paper
proposal. Roundtable sessions and international participation are
strongly encouraged.

Please send 150-250 word proposals to

Dr Tobias Hochscherf, Conference Co-organiser
Northumbria University
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Lipman Bldg.
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST
United Kingdom
Phone: ++44(0)191-227-4932
Email: tobias.hochscherf@northumbria.ac.uk