Call for Papers

If we think of aesthetics as the theory of the subject’s sensible self-reflection that also allows for a more nuanced and pluri-sensuous understanding of the life world, critique can be interpreted as an organic social mediation. In the 1960s and 1970s, existentialist, phenomenological and anti-colonial positions, such as Frantz Fanon’s reflections on the racialized subject moving between the “dialectic of the body and of the world” (1965), influenced aesthetic practices and theories which reconfigured concepts of art, subjectivity and politics alike. During this process, the human body was adapted as a site of reflective emancipation and self-critical and subversive contestation.

In Eastern and Western Europe as well as in Northern Africa or the US, techniques formerly used within late Surrealist practices were given new meaning in a highly politicised and ideologised media landscape. Across feminism, anti-colonial and partisan contexts, technically reproduced conversations and desires transformed intellectual publications and formalist artworks into “reproductive bodies” (Young 2012) that made art and theory useful in a new way. For example, in Carla Lonzi’s turn from art criticism to female auto-erotic pleasure, transcription was central to her call for resonance across feminist histories and colonized lived experience. Indeed, Lonzi’s much-debated use of the term ‘authentic’ after Simone de Beauvoir allowed for a reconfigured reproductive critique in art history and feminism alike by making “subjectivity and technique coincide” (Roberts 2009) in practice.

The technical reconfiguration of subjectivity, strategies of enactment, and forms of contestation was also central for artists such as Katalin Ladik, Valie Export, Sanja Iveković, or Adrian Piper. During the same period, they explored the multifaceted, sometimes also contradictory and violent relation between technology and the body. Questioning standardized regimes of visibility, their heterogenous engagements with “extra media” (Crispolti 1978) across surveillance technologies, exhibition value and politicised mass culture (Benjamin 1935) allowed for positions that rethought their own aesthetic practice as a radical (existential) practice. In the conjunction of the written page, the verbalized sound and the enacting body, artistic labour, sexual liberation and political practice coincided.

Foregrounding what is now known as performance art, social reproduction theories and postcolonial thinking at the same time, these examples allow us to return to the conjunction of these fields today, despite their current institutional division. Reconsidering artistic, critical and political mediation in the current times of global warfare, fragmented welfare and authoritarian turns, what can the legacy of these practices tell us about the escalating co-dependence of technology and subjectivity today? Moreover, what are the aesthetic forms of ‘extra media’, mediation and enactment amid geopolitical crises? Finally, how are concepts determining art, gender, sexuality and racism interrelated in practice?

For this exploratory workshop, we invite papers that introduce case studies and readings across the fields of art history, aesthetic and political philosophy as well as cultural and gender studies. We envision a program in which presentations and readings take place conjointly, hence enabling an open space for discussion and reflection along the lines of the material introduced by each participant. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes and will be followed by a discussion.

Please send title, abstract (max. 2000 characters) and a short bio summarized in one PDF-document to ResearchGroup-Gruendler@khi.fi.it by June 14^th, 2026.

For English version please scroll down

Gegenwärtig werden zwei Phänomene heftig diskutiert, die das Selbstverständnis europäischer Urbanität in Frage stellen: Einerseits die Veränderung der Lebens- und Erlebenswelt „Stadt“, da der öffentliche Raum marktförmigen Nutzungen weichen muss und urbane und jeweils ortstypische Kultureinrichtungen, Gastronomien und Fachgeschäfte als Verweil- und Flanierorte zunehmend von global gleichartigen Handelsketten, Nagelstudios und Mobiltelefonshops abgelöst werden. Andererseits verlagert sich die öffentliche Diskussion zunehmend in den digitalen Raum. Das geht einher mit erweiterten Partizipationsmöglichkeiten und den damit verbundenen Legitimitätsfragen, führt aber auch zu Polarisierung, populistischen Vereinfachungen und Fehlinformationen. Beide Entwicklungen lassen sich als ein Verlust an urbanitas beschreiben, ein Begriff, der innerhalb der klassischen Rhetorik das Argumentieren an eine Ethik des Gemeinwohls koppelt und zudem geistvolle, situationsangemessene sowie soziale Bindung stiftende Rede bezeichnet. In diesem Sinne ist bei Cicero (Brut.) urbanitas dem sensus communis verpflichtet. Darunter ist keineswegs die Kapitulation vor einem vermeintlichen Volkswillen zu verstehen, sondern diskursive Formen der Mäßigung und des Abwägens, die im Dialog unter Gleichen aus Divergenz und Ambivalenz einen gemeinschaftsfähigen Konsens generieren.

Diese Kulturtechniken der römischen Republik wurden in jenem Moment wiederbelebt und weiterentwickelt, als in Europa die Städte als Ver- und Aushandlungszentren an Einfluss gewinnen, allen voran in den Stadtrepubliken der italienischen Renaissance. Dabei avanciert Rhetorik zur Leitdisziplin, die Denkstile und Ethiken, aber auch Handlungsanleitungen einer zivilen Sozietät hervorbringt. Denn die humanistischen Dialoge und Traktate formulieren auch Vorstellungen zur konkreten Ausgestaltung der urbanen Gesellschaft, bei Leon Battista Alberti etwa betrifft das pädagogische Ideen, Formen der ethischen Selbstgestaltung und Architektur gleichermaßen. Umgekehrt dienen die harmonischen Proportionen der Renaissancearchitektur auch als metaphorische Rahmung für neue Interaktionsformen und Kommunikationsstile, etwa die stilbildende civil conversazione in Baldassare Castigliones Cortegiano (1528) am Hof von Urbino oder Moderata Fontes Dialog Il merito delle donne (p.m. 1600), dessen protofeministischer Gegenentwurf einer weiblichen brigata in einem geschützten Garten angesiedelt ist. Bei aller Insistenz auf soziale Bindung und Gestaltung einer gemeinschaftlichen Lebenswelt muss auch kritisch hinterfragt werden, wer an diesem „Dialog unter Gleichen“ teilnehmen konnte und weshalb die vermeintlich „Anderen“, die Sklaven, Bettler usw. meist nur dann Eingang in die Dialoge und Traktate fanden, wenn sie als Negativbeispiele inszeniert und benutzt wurden.

Neben den Höfen der italienischen Stadtstaaten und kunstvollen Gartenarchitekturen sind Bühnen ein wichtiger Aushandlungsort urbaner Lebensstile und Lebensentwürfe, die den gebauten Stadtraum maßgeblich prägen, wie beispielsweise die Corales de comedia in der neugeschaffenen spanischen Hauptstadt Madrid bezeugen. Wenngleich oftmals ein Propagandamedium, gibt es im frühneuzeitlichen Theater auch subversive Gegenentwürfe zum humanistischen Konversationsstil, indem etwa die sprezzatura eines Pedanten als inhaltsloses Phrasendreschen entlarvt wird. Maskerade, Taschenspielertricks und Verwechslungskomödien dienen dabei nicht nur der Unterhaltung, sondern auch als gesellschaftspolitischer Kommentar und stellen zugleich Praktiken des Witzes und der geistvollen Pointe als zentrale Elemente urbaner Kommunikation aus. Einen institutionellen Ort der Aushandlung findet die urbanitas schließlich auch in den Sozietäten bzw. Akademien.

Rhetorisch finden Maskerade und Täuschung ihren Niederschlag bereits in frühneuzeitlichen Dialogen wie Albertis kritisch-satirischem Momus oder vom Fürsten und dann vor allem in barocken Dialogen, die idealtypische Konversations- und Umgangsformen beschreiben. Sie akzentuieren einen weiteren Aspekt der urbanitas, der von Quintilian (6,3) entwickelt wurde: die Kunst der Verstellung, welche Ambivalenzen als ironischen Doppelsinn inszeniert oder den Vorteil strategischen Schweigens untermauert, z.B. in Baltasar Graciáns Agudeza y Arte de ingenio (1648) oder in der Metaphorologie Emanuel Thesauros Canocchiale Aristotelico (1654). Daran lässt sich das geschärfte Bewusstsein für Hierarchisierung und Stratifizierung urbaner Gesellschaften ablesen, die das nachtridentinische Europa prägen.

Dieser CfA wendet sich an Forscher:innen unterschiedlichster Disziplinen, die den frühneuzeitlichen Faszinationstyp Stadt aus diskursiver, topographischer, soziologischer, politischer, kunsthistorischer und architektonischer Sicht beleuchten. Besonders erwünscht sind Vorschläge, die den Zusammenhang zwischen rhetorischen Instrumentarien und frühneuzeitlicher Urbanität fokussieren.

• Inwiefern überschneiden sich die Topoi der Rhetorik mit der Topographie der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt? Welche rhetorischen Kategorien widerspiegeln sich in den Stadtarchitekturen?
• Welche Genres reflektieren städtischen Leben wie und mit welchen Mitteln (Novellistik, Komödien, Stadtführer…)?
• Wie wird urbanes Leben in frühneuzeitlichen Texten konstruiert und inszeniert?
• Welche Orte des Aushandelns korrespondieren mit welchen Sagbarkeitsregeln?
• Welche Gemeinwesen propagieren humanistischen rhetorischen Ideale? (Wo) werden diese in der Realität eingelöst?
• Welche Rolle spielen Witz, Pointe und geistvolle Redeformen (facetiae, argutia, ingenium) in der Konstruktion und Aushandlung urbaner Sozialität?
• Wie wird in den Dialogen und Traktaten, aber auch im konkret gebauten Stadtraum, mit Andersheit umgegangen? Wieviel Teilhabe an gemeinschaftlichen Räumen und Rhetoriken der Sichtbarkeit wird „den Anderen“ zugestanden?
• Gibt es (rhetorische, ästhetische usw.) subversive Strategien, welche die durchaus normativen Konzepte der urbanitas konterkarieren?
• Wie verändert sich die Konstruktion des Stadtraums im Übergang zum Absolutismus literarisch und physisch?

Für die Erörterung dieser und ähnlicher Fragen bitten wir um die Zusendung eines Abstracts im Ausmaß von max. 500 Wörtern in Deutsch, Englisch, Spanisch, Italienisch oder Französisch und eines kurzen CVs bis zum 30.06.2026. Ausgewählte Vorschläge müssen bis zum 30.11.2026 als fertige Beiträge im Ausmaß von 8000 Wörtern an Marlen Bidwell-Steiner (marlen.bidwell-steiner@univie.ac.at) und Hana Gründler (gruendler@khi.fi.it) geschickt werden und werden nach einem erfolgreichen Peer-Review-Verfahren in der Ausgabe der Zeitsprünge 2/27 veröffentlicht.

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Two developments much debated at present unsettle the self-conception of European urbanity. First, the lived experience of the city is changing as public space yields to market-oriented uses, while locally embedded cultural institutions, pubs, and specialist shops are increasingly replaced by globally uniform retail chains, nail salons and mobile phone shops—diminishing spaces for lingering and strolling. Second, public discourse is increasingly shifting into digital arenas. This affords expanded opportunities for participation and raises questions of legitimacy, yet also fosters polarisation, populist simplifications, and misinformation. Both trajectories may be described as a loss of urbanitas: a term from classical rhetoric that binds argumentation to an ethics of the common good and denotes a witty, situationally attuned and socially binding mode of speech. In this sense, Cicero’s urbanitas (Brutus) is committed to the sensus communis—not as capitulation to a supposed popular will, but as discursive forms of moderation and deliberation that, in dialogue among equals, generate community-sustaining consensus out of divergence and ambivalence.

These cultural techniques of the Roman Republic were revived and further developed at a moment when urban spaces, above all the Italian city-republics of the Renaissance, gained political weight as centres of negotiation. Rhetoric emerges as a leading discipline that fashions modes of thought, ethics, and practical guidelines for a civil society. Humanist dialogues and treatises also articulate concrete designs for urban life. In Leon Battista Alberti, for instance, pedagogical programmes, forms of ethical self-fashioning, and architectural theory are closely interwoven. Conversely, the harmonious proportions of Renaissance architecture furnish a metaphorical framework for new modes of interaction and communicative style—paradigmatically in the genre-defining civil conversazione of Baldassarre Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (1528) at the court of Urbino, or in Moderata Fonte’s Il merito delle donne (pub. 1600), whose proto-feminist counter-design of a female brigata is set within a protected garden. For all the emphasis on social bonds and the creation of a shared life-world, it remains crucial to ask who could participate in this “dialogue among equals” and why the ostensibly “Other”—enslaved people, beggars, and other marginalised groups—generally appear in dialogues and tracts only when staged as negative exempla.

Beyond the courts of the Italian city-states and ornate garden architectures, theatres became key sites for negotiating urban lifestyles that decisively shape the built cityscape, as evidenced by the corrales de comedia in the newly established Spanish capital, Madrid. Although often media of propaganda, early modern stages also develop subversive counter-designs to humanist conversational style—for example by exposing the pedant’s sprezzatura as vacuous platitudes. Masquerade, sleight of hand, and the comedy of mistaken identity serve not only as entertainment but also as socio-political commentary; at the same time, they foreground esprit, punchline, and repartee as central elements of urban communication. Finally, urbanitas finds institutional arenas of negotiation in academic societies and salons.

Rhetorically, masquerade and deception are already reflected in early modern dialogues—such as Alberti’s critical-satirical Momus or the Prince—and then especially in Baroque dialogues and conduct books that describe ideal-typical forms of conversation and manners. These accentuate another aspect of urbanitas developed by Quintilian (6.3): the art of disguise, which stages ambivalence as ironic double meaning, and the strategic advantage of silence; exemplary here are Baltasar Gracián’s Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648) and Emanuele Tesauro’s Cannocchiale aristotelico (1654). This corpus reflects a sharpened awareness of the hierarchization and stratification of urban societies characteristic of post-Tridentine Europe.

This call for abstracts invites researchers from a wide range of disciplines to illuminate the early modern fascination with the city from discursive, topographical, sociological, political, art-historical, and architectural perspectives. We particularly welcome proposals that foreground the nexus between rhetorical instruments and early modern urbanity on the following questions:

• To what extent do the topoi of rhetoric overlap with the topography of the early modern city? Which rhetorical categories are reflected in urban architecture?
• Which genres reflect urban life—how, and by what means (novels, comedies, city guides, etc.)?
• How is urban life constructed and staged in early modern texts?
• Which sites of negotiation correspond to which boundaries of the sayable?
• Which communities propagate humanist rhetorical ideals, and where (and how) are these realised in practice?
• What role do urbane wit, punchlines, and forms of ingenious speech (facetiae, argutia, ingenium) play in constructing and negotiating urban sociality?
• How is otherness addressed in dialogues and tracts, but also within the materially built urban space? How much participation in communal spaces and in a rhetoric of visibility is granted to “the Others”?
• Are there subversive (rhetorical, aesthetic, etc.) strategies that counteract normative concepts of urbanitas?
• How does the construction of urban space change in the transition to absolutism—textually and materially?

Please submit an abstract (max. 500 words) in German, English, Spanish, Italian, or French, together with a short CV, by 30 June 2026. Selected proposals should be submitted as completed essays (c. 8,000 words) by 30 November 2026 to Marlen Bidwell-Steiner (marlen.bidwell-steiner@univie.ac.at) and Hana Gründler (gruendler@khi.fi.it). Following successful peer review, the essays will be published in Zeitsprünge 2/27.

We look forward to theoretically grounded, empirically sensitive, and interdisciplinary contributions that reconceptualise early modern urbanitas as an aesthetic–rhetorical, social, and spatial practice.

When is a drawing complete, independent, or “finished”? Is the concept of completion a conscious decision made by the artist, or something that happens later, in the hands of collectors, dealers, curators, or algorithms? The aim of this workshop is to investigate when and whether drawings were considered “finished” and how that sense of completion is frustrated as drawings move between contexts from the fifteenth century to today. The workshop treats drawings as independent objects that circulate and accrue economic and emotional value, and generate knowledge across art, science, design, and technology.  Thus, drawings are understood here as sites of ongoing inquiry, experimentation, and reasoning, capable of generating unique forms of knowledge, visualization, and conceptual connection. Developed in dialogue with the research trajectories of the Medici Archive Project and the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” and their focus on processual and methodological approaches, this workshop treats “completion” not as a final state, but as a series of active thresholds. This workshop intends to focus on those moments when a drawing is judged, classified, circulated, or stabilized. The organizers invite proposals that address how drawings shift status as they move between studios, museums, archives, markets, and digital platforms from the 1400s to today. How and when do drawings exceed their initial roles as studies, models, technical records, or designs to be treated as finished works or circulating images in their own right? What forms of knowledge, agency, gaps, new connections or authorship do drawings perform when disentangled from the artistic, technical, or scientific processes they were meant to support or contexts they emerged from? How do these shifting roles reshape the criteria by which a drawing is recognized as “complete”, or even as a drawing?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• In/Completion: Shaping criteria of in/completion and shifting status of drawings, and the connoisseurial judgment, technical imaging, and AI‑assisted analysis in attribution, cataloguing, and assessments of “finish.”
• Epistemic Practice: Drawing in knowledge production (art, science, design), including intersections with coding and proto-algorithmic representation
• Collecting and markets: how preservation, display, and recontextualization shape value systems.
• Archives: when drawings count as documentation, records, or evidence

We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages whose work engages with the material, epistemic, or institutional dimensions of drawing. Please submit a single PDF with a paper title (max. 15 words), a 250-word max. abstract, and a short biography (1 page max.) to karina.pawlow@khi.fi.it  and education@medici.org by July 10. Notifications will be sent by the end of July.

This two-day workshop will be hosted across three venues: on the first day at the Medici Archive Project (Palazzo Alberti), and on the second day at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai) with a visit to the drawing collection of the Museo Galileo, organized in collaboration with the museum.

The workshop language is English, and presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.

The organizers are currently exploring possibilities for supporting participants’ travel and accommodation expenses. As the availability and extent of such support remain uncertain at this stage, applicants who would require financial assistance are invited to include a brief statement outlining their motivation and funding needs (and those who have research funds available are asked to let us know, so we can funnel potential funding to those who need it most).