CFP: Art as Cultural Diplomacy (Riga, 29-30 Jan 2016)

Call for Papers for the Panel:
Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe
As part of the Fifth Euroacademia International Conference ‘Re-Inventing Eastern Europe’, to be held in Riga, Latvia on 29th – 30th of January 2016
Deadline: 10th of December 2015
Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe
Panel Proposed by: Cassandra Sciortino, University of California, Santa Barbara
Panel Description
The panel “Art as cultural diplomacy” seeks papers that explore the function of art (in its broadest definition) as an instrument of cultural diplomacy by the state and, especially, by nongovernmental
actors. The main theme of the session is the question of art and diplomacy in Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Papers are welcome which explore issues related to the role of art, diplomacy and the politicization of the European Union and its candidate countries, as are those which consider how the arts have pursued or resisted East-West dichotomies and other narratives of alterity in Europe and worldwide.  The panel seeks to combine a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how art—its various practices, history, and theory—are an important area of inquiry in the expanding field of cultural diplomacy.
Some examples of topics include:
– How can art serve as a neutral platform for exchange to promote dialogue and understanding between foreign states?
– How can art, including organized festivals (i.e. film, art, music.), cultivate transnational identities that undermine dichotomies of East and West, and other narratives of alterity in Europe and beyond it?
– The implications for art as an instrument of diplomacy in a postmodern age where geopolitics and power are increasingly mobilized by image based structures of persuasion
– How has/can art facilitate cohesion between European Union member states and candidate states that effectively responds to the EU’s efforts to create “unity in diversity.”
– The politics of mapping Europe: mental and cartographic
– Community based art as a social practice to engage issues of European identity
– The difference between art as cultural diplomacy and propaganda
– The digital revolution and the emergence of social media as platforms for art to communicate across social, cultural, and national boundaries?
– Diplomacy in the history of art in Europe and Eastern Europe
– Artists as diplomats
– Art history as diplomacy—exhibitions, post-colonial criticism, global art history, and other revisions to the conventional boundaries of Europe and its history of art
– The international activity of cultural institutes
Please apply on-line or submit abstracts of less than 300 words together with the details of affiliation until 10th of December 2015 to
application@euroacademia.eu
For full details of the conference, please see before applying the conference website: http://euroacademia.eu/conference/fifth-reinventing-eastern-europe/