Iconography and Religious Otherness
Scientific Coordinators: Ivana Čapeta Rakić, Giuseppe Capriotti, and Marina Vicelja Matijašić
Venue and Date: University of Rijeka, Rijeka (Croatia) – June 10-11, 2021
Meeting call:
CA18129 IS-LE is co-organising Fifteenth International Conference of Iconographic Studies with the Center for Iconographic Studies (University of Rijeka), the Department of Art History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Split), and the Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism (University of Macerata). There will be 3 sessions within the Conference sponsored by COST Action CA18129 and dedicated to the topics relevant to the Action.
The creation of Otherness is a process by which a dominant group (Self, Us) constructs one or more outer groups (Them, Others) by assigning them different features and attributes, real or imagined. This continuous process was not only directed towards the outside, but also towards the inside, that is, towards dissident groups. With the recent political challenges, Otherness has become a highly relevant and frequently discussed topic among scholars from different disciplines, predominantly philosophy, anthropology, sociology, but also including literature (philology), art history and others. The aim of this conference is to put together scholars who would discuss and reconsider the concept of Otherness from an iconographic and iconological point of view. Scholars are invited to present proposals on different topics related to the construction of otherness in iconography i.e. the visualization of the Religious Other throughout all historical periods.
Dedicated sessions sponsored by the COST Action CA18129 will be focused on the creation of the “Muslim Other” focusing specially on Christian-Muslim relations in the late medieval and early modern periods.
The themes may include, but are not limited to:
– Theoretical approaches for the analysis of the image of the “Muslim Other”.
– Art and conversion. How were images used as a mechanism for the conversion of the religious other?
– The image of the “converso” versus images for conversion.
– Attitudes against the “Muslim Other”: exotization, orientalization, admiration, awe…
– Otherness and the construction of the concept of race. Ethnic and regional diversity and its reception in visual culture.
– Monstrosity and deformity as a visual expression of Otherness.
-Cross-cultural approaches on how alterity was created in and perceive in different spaces of Europe and North Africa.
