On behalf of the HNA Board, I am pleased to inform you that HNA has
just become an official affiliate of the Renaissance Society of
America. This means that we have an opportunity to host one or more
panels at the RSA annual conference every year. As many of you are
aware, RSA is an important interdisciplinary venue for current
research on early modern Europe, with an increasing number of panels
on visual culture. Many of our sister organizations in early modern
studies are affiliates, and we are excited about this opportunity to
provide another valuable forum for presenting research and promoting
networking among HNA members and scholars in related disciplines. If
you are not already a member of RSA, check out their website at:
www.rsa.org.

The next RSA meeting takes place in Chicago, April 3-5, 2008. Below is
a call for papers. I am serving as organizer but will be looking for
someone else to chair. From now on, we will be seeking organizers and
chairs for panels in future years, just as we do for CAA. (RSA 2009
will be in Los Angeles, 2010 in Venice!).

If you would like to respond to the CFP below, please contact me by May 1.

Best wishes,

Stephanie Dickey
Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art, Queen’s University
Vice-President, Historians of Netherlandish Art

CALL FOR PAPERS: HNA at RSA Chicago 3-5 April 2008

Art and its Audiences in the Early Modern Netherlands

Interpretation of visual art from the historical past can be
approached from a variety of theoretical positions and practical
strategies, within which the reconstruction of historical context
plays an increasingly contested role. By what means can we infer how
early modern viewers interpreted, responded to, and interacted with
works of art?  What patterns of response can be discerned? What kinds
of evidence are available, and how reliable are they?  This session
invites papers that approach works of art through the critical
application of contemporaneous sources such as inventory records,
literary ekphraseis, travellers’ accounts, theoretical texts, artistic
responses (copies, variants, adaptations), and documents relating to
collecting, display, and connoisseurship. Papers may address works in
any medium from the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth centuries.
The primary focus is on art produced in the Netherlands (Flanders or
the Dutch Republic), but papers concerning the Hapsburg lands and
other related territories will also be considered.

Depending upon interest, we will propose between one and four panels
of three papers each.

Proposals should include the following items:
1.    Preliminary abstract, 150-300 words.
2.    CV with e-mail address, phone and fax numbers.