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Call for Papers

Type: Calls For Papers [View all]
Posted by: The University of California, Irvine
Deadline: Fri, February 13th, 2026

UCI Visual Studies Conference 2026 

Call for Papers

Memento Mori: Death, Mourning, Decay

 Presented by the Second-Year Cohort

Abstract Submissions Due:
Friday,  February 13th, 2026

Conference Date:
Friday,  April 10th, 2026

This one-day conference gathers graduate students to present and discuss topics related to death, mourning, and decay broadly speaking. Above and beyond the inevitability of our own death, we are confronted with the ever present image of death from genocide to ecological destruction. In our own field of Art History, from Ancient to Contemporary, questions of death, mourning, and decay permeate both visual materiality and constructed histories. We encourage proposal submissions from current or recent graduate students (MA, MFA, and PhD) and independent scholars alike whose work intertwines, augments, interprets, and addresses questions of death, mourning, decay, and their images. We hope to foster a transdisciplinary place of learning and are interested in applicants from any background including, but not limited to, Art History, Visual Studies, English, Anthropology, Archeology, Comparative Literature, Anthropocene Studies, and Medical Humanities. Further, we welcome and encourage non-normative presentations such as, but not limited to, poetry and creative writing, performance art, and short film.  

 

Depictions of death and violence 

Memory, monuments, and mourning 

Destructions of societal systems and anarchy 

Death drive, the uncanny, and psychoanalysis 

Death of the art object

 Decay, defacement, destruction 

The archive & conservation 

History writing at the end of the world 

Scientific approaches to death and rebirth 

Eroticism and taboo associated with death

The macabre, profane, sacrificial  

Handling of corpses and ethics of displaying human remains

Notions of the body, deterioration, abject

Death & afterlife as boundary or aporia 

War, genocide, extinction, discplacement 

Rehabilitation as an aspect of death:

Art therapy and reconstruction

 

Keynote Speaker: Suzanne Hudson 

We are pleased to welcome renowned scholar, critic, and art historian Suzanne Hudson as our keynote speaker. Suzanne is a Professor of Art History and Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. Further, Suzanne was the co-founder of Contemporary Art Think Tank and the Society of Contemporary Art Historians and has recently served on the Advisory Board of the Archives of American Art Journal, and as a member of the editorial board of CAA.Reviews. Currently, Suzanne is the Consortium Scholar and a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute. Privileging theory, history, and conventions of painting, Suzanne stakes her claims in art, art-making, institutional spaces, and spaces of care across the 19th and 21st century. Adding to an impressive list of publications, she recently published a groundbreaking volume entitled Modernism, Art, Therapy (Yale University Press, 2024) with another forthcoming volume entitled Art and Psychotherapy (Oxford University Press).

 

APPLY HERE: https://forms.gle/Vf2DRf8NBZuSiyAz6

 

Potential contributors should submit a CV, an abstract (max 300 words) and a bio (max 100 words) to the form above. Participants will be notified by Friday, February 20th.

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to the organizers at: UCIVisualStudiesConference@gmail.com

Sincerely,  Second-Year Graduate Students, Visual Studies Program  University of California, Irvine    

 

 

Posted on Thu, January 22nd, 2026
Expires on Fri, February 13th, 2026

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