Jobs & Opportunities » Opportunities

Exploring the Nocturne

Type: Calls For Papers [View all]
Posted by: -Thomas Jefferson University --
Deadline: Sat, July 15th, 2023

We are seeking proposals for papers on the theme of the nocturne for a new peer-edited anthology of the nocturne as form and concept that is distinctive to the modern, global period. We invite investigations of the expressive or innovative exploitation of night and darkness as format, motif, or metaphor from the late 18th century to early 20th century. Interdisciplinary analyses and trans-cultural investigations relevant to all fields of art and architecture are especially welcome.

The term “nocturne” transformed in the 19th century from a descriptor of quiet, meditative music to a poetic and artistic form of experimentation. In “Correspondances,” Charles Baudelaire harnesses the nocturne as a vehicle for the suggestive interpenetration of the arts and the senses in which sounds and colors mingle in vast darkness. James McNeill Whistler titled his moonlight paintings as “Nocturnes,” associating them with music to evoke a non-narrative, sensual response in the viewer. Vincent van Gogh, by contrast, deployed night to conjure visionary imaginings and threatened madness.

Concurrently, artificial lighting transformed modern cities, rendering the urban nightscape as an innovative subject. Photography and film expanded the technical means for capturing and interpreting night. Informed by social, imperial, and scientific discourse, night became associated with jungles, colonies, races, desperation, psychosis, and dreams, and the parameters of the nocturne broadened to encompass the unconscious, the unknown, the irrational. 

 

 

-Suzanne Singletary suzanne.singletary@jefferson.edu and Alice Price amrprix@gmail.com

Posted on Mon, April 17th, 2023
Expires on Sat, July 15th, 2023

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