International Research Workshop
Proto-national networks and the transmigration of artistic phenomena: Schiavoni/Illyrians between Italy and Eastern Adriatic coast

The workshop aims at bringing together specialists and doctoral students from various academic backgrounds, focusing on art historical methodology in researching visual phenomena related to the expression of proto-national identities of the immigrant communities in the Early Modern period. The specific thematic focus of Dubrovnik workshop is the formation of proto-national networks of so-called Schiavoni/Illyrians between Italy and Eastern Adriatic coast and their impact on the transmigration of artists and architectural and artistic objects and designs, taken as a paradigmatic case study for a number of important research problems of art history as a global discipline.

The formation of structured groups within immigrant communities in Early Modern Italy, such as confraternities and colleges, has long been recognised as one of the main vehicles of integration into the host society, while also functioning as centres of the formulation of proto-national identities, inevitably based on their ”Otherness”. In order to function on both practical and symbolic level, these institutions created buildings and artworks, which reveal rivalries and alliances between different national groups and the host society hierarchy, especially in multi-layered urban contexts and artistic centres such as Rome, Bologna or Venice. Emerging from the experience of historical and contemporary exiles and their relevance for current debates on identity and history, related art-historical discourses also include analysis of collective patronage specific iconography and choice of artists, bordering with migration studies, confraternity studies, musicology and history of language and literature.

Additionally, these ”national” hubs abroad can also be seen as a loose network which enables mobility and encounters of artists and patrons as well as the circulation of knowledge, artworks and projects between Italian artistic centres and the lands of immigrants’ origin, intersecting with diplomatic networks and the Republic of letters. Moreover, these were also Early Modern channels for international help in cases of natural disasters, such as earthquakes or fires, or similar events that necessarily changed the visual and architectural culture of a place. Therefore, the study of the network in question enriches the understanding of agents and vehicles of transmigration of forms and visual norms outside (or parallel to) the post-colonial discourse, enabling a better understanding of processes of creation, diffusion and consumption of the visual language.

The specific case of Dubrovnik, a semi-independent maritime Republic through the Early Modern period, and, more broadly, historical confraternities and colleges of immigrants and students arriving to Italy from the area broadly coinciding with present-day Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Hercegovina and Montenegro, represent a telling example of a proto-national network and its visible impact on both urban and single single-artwork scale, also in cases of great natural disasters, like the great earthquake of 1667. It is therefore particularly useful for PhD students and recent graduates working on related topics while also providing new and fruitful insight on the artistic heritage of a UNESCO site.

In addition to lectures by experts in Roman, Venetian and Bolognese artistic heritage, the workshop includes fieldwork (work on the monuments, in the State Archives and the Research Library collection of rare books), and reading seminars (articles, published and unpublished sources available through an online reader). The work shall focus both on existing monuments as well as on those documented in the archival sources. The participants will present small supervised individual assignments related to the general topic of the workshop.

TEACHING STAFF: Prof Jasenka Gudelj, PhD, University of Zagreb (main organizer); Prof Sabine Frommel, PhD, EPHE Paris; Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, PhD, Senior scholar, Max-Planck Institute for Art History – Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome; Prof. Bernard Aikema, PhD, University of Verona; Prof. Francesca Coltrinari, PhD, University of Macerata; Prof. Giuseppe Capriotti, PhD, University of Macerata; Prof. Danko Šourek, PhD, University of Zagreb; Tanja Trška, PhD, University of Zagreb; Daniel Premerl, PhD, Institute of Art History, Zagreb; Anita Ruso, PhD, University of Zagreb (workshop coordinator)

VENUE & ACCOMMODATION
The workshop will take place in the Centre for Advanced Academic Studies (CAAS), don Frana Bulića 4, Dubrovnik, www.caas.unizg.hr
Participants’ accommodation is provided in double rooms in the CAAS dormitory and alternatively students’ dormitory 50 meters from the venue.
The participation fee is 250 EUR, which includes accommodation expenses (without meals). Participants are expected to make their own travel arrangements.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Please send a 1 page abstract of your research along with a CV by 15 April 2018 to anita_ruso@yahoo.com. Successful applicants will be notified by 20 April 2018.