All are welcome to join us for the 14th Annual Conference of the Early Modern, hosted by the Early Modern Studies Society.
January 30
7 p.m.–7:15 Opening Remarks
KTS Lecture Hall
7:15–8:45 p.m.— ‘The Secrets of the Black Commentator’, Angela Vanhaelen, McGill University
KTS Lecture Hall
Abstract: Painted figures who gesture and stare out at the viewer play a communicative role in early modern European art. According to Leon Battista Alberti, the interlocutor figure “tells the spectator what is going on” while also pointing out secrets that the picture does not fully disclose. In this way, the commentator indicates how art both conveys and withholds information. Starting from European depictions of the Three Magi and moving to seventeenth-century Dutch portraits and domestic scenes, my paper considers imagery that racializes the commentator figure. Surveying the pictorial conventions used to depict the faces of Black characters, I assess what type of information was being publicized and what type of information was being suppressed.
Angela Vanhaelen is Professor of Art History at McGill University. She is the author of Opacity: Blackness and the Art of the Dutch Republic; The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, and Labyrinths; and The Wake of Iconoclasm: Painting the Church in the Dutch Republic, all published by Penn State University Press.
inset painting: A Woman Reading a Letter with a Negro Page in Attendance, 1670 by Michiel van Musscher, public domain
8:45–9:30 p.m.—Reception
G. Peter Wilson Room
January 31
10 a.m.—Opening Remarks
10:15–12 p.m.—Panel 1: Saints, Stars, and Scalpels: Observations from within science and art in the early modern period
Lauren Konok
The (in) corruptible body: The role of experimentation in the authentication of religious relics in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Emily Reid
The Comet Messenger: The eyes of her who is glorified here below turned to the starry heavens
Eliza Rhinelander
Eyes Sharp as a Scalpel: Vesalius’ Anatomical Illustrations and the Violence of the Gaze
12–1 p.m. Break
1–2 p.m. Alumni lecture: Binding Time
Mirren Trevors, BA(Hons)’25, MA student at Queen’s University
An Examination of the Methods, Materials, and Maintenance of Early Modern Bookbinding
2–3 p.m. Panel 2: Body and Soul—Hidden realities in Early Modern art and literature
Sophia McCurdy
Emotional Paralysis in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquoy
Solenda Cooper
Objectification, Inspiration, and Reclamation: People of Colour and the Baroque Art Movement
Sarah Ryan
Thesis Excerpt
3–4 p.m. Panel 3: Freeing Your Mind—Radical notions from the Early Modern
Aidan Pothier
Wu Cheng’en’s Monkey King and the Nature of Freedom
Mark Mann
An Objection to Berkeleyan Idealism
4–4:15 Closing Remarks
4:15 Reception
G. Peter Wilson Room
banner painting: Familiegroep in een landschap, 1645-1648 by Frans Hals, public domain
