Call for Papers: Doesn’t It Matter?
Recovering Marginalized and Ephemeral Materials in Histories of Early Modern Art, Science, and Technology

Deadline for submissions: 4 August 2025
Organised by: Karina Pawlow (KHI Florenz) and Emily Hyatt (Yale University)
Decay, disavowal, defacement, disintegration: in writing stories about the art and science of the past, how does one account for that which no longer remains intact? This panel explores how early modern art, science, and technology were shaped by materials that have since disappeared from the historical record or been marginalized due to physical degradation, cultural devaluation, or historiographical neglect. While canonical art historical accounts often focus on durable or “noble” substances such as marble, bronze, or oil paint, a wide range of early modern practices relied on more ephemeral and unstable materials: cartapesta, wax, stucco, glass, and other poly-material combinations. These plastic modelling materials were central not only to devotional practices and aesthetic production, but also to experimentation, artisanal knowledge, and the making of early scientific instruments and models.
This panel invites papers that investigate the production, use, and afterlives of such marginal materials across domains, whether in sacred sculpture, theater and performance, medical training, alchemical laboratories, or the development of technologies and their prototypes.
We are especially interested in papers that explore:
1. Practices and Processes
– How were ephemeral or composite materials used in artistic, scientific, and artisanal contexts?
– What forms of modelling, experimentation, or prototyping depended on fragile or transient substances?
– How did workshop practices, conservation techniques, or reconstructions deal with material loss?
2. Methodological and Historiographical Challenges
– How can we approach materials that have left few or no physical traces?
– What archival, visual, or textual sources allow access to vanished objects or substances?
– How do material hierarchies shape the canon and its exclusions?
3. Theories of Loss, Memory, and Value
– What theoretical frameworks help us think with decay or absence (e.g., hauntology, aesthetics of loss, material memory)?
– How was fragility valued or denigrated in early modern contexts?
– How might ephemeral materials help us rethink the boundaries between art, science, and technology?
We welcome submissions from diverse geographic regions and interdisciplinary backgrounds, particularly those that address underrepresented materials and practices in the early modern world (c. 1350–1750).
Submission: Please send a proposal of max. 200 words and a short CV (max. 200 words) by 4 August 2025 to: emily.hyatt@yale.edu and karina.pawlow@khi.fi.it
This panel is being proposed for the Renaissance Society of America 2026 conference in San Francisco (February 19-21).
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
techneredaktion (23. Juli 2025). Call for Papers: Doesn’t It Matter? Dimensionen der techne in den Künsten. Abgerufen am 5. März 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/14etc
