Art Historians of Southern California: http://www.arthistsocal.org/

The tele-electronic digital world is transforming the ways we teach, the types of research we pursue, the subjects we teach about, the methodologies we employ, as well as how we archive and preserve. The Getty has pledge to spend millions on digital tools and USC used its 1.9 million Mellon Grant for Digital Humanities to announce a larger pledge for the University to spend a billion in the next ten years on digital knowledge and informatics. Institutional leverage and enticement with monetary support is sure to create disruption and change for academics. What does this mean for scholars and professionals and how is it going to affect our disciplines? The College Art Association published their Samuel Kress Foundation study on Changing Research in Art History in their May 7th newsletter which highlighted the need for academics of visual culture to respond to the changing needs of the discipline.

This symposium seeks submissions which engage and theorize the ways the study of art history and visual culture are changing and the ways scholars are adapting and innovating to meet these new challenges and opportunities. We encourage inter-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary and uni-disciplinary approaches. Diverse topics are welcome and we imagine receiving proposals on: digital pedagogy, archival practices, digital humanities, database as research, visual scholarship, virtual humanities, digital/virtual/database art among others.

250 Word abstracts should be submitted to meyer_walter@smc.edu & arthistsocal@gmail.com by August 15th. Participants will be notified by September 1st.

The conference will take place on Saturday, October 18th at Santa Monica College. Lev Manovich, pioneer in theorizing cultural analytics and new media history, will be the keynote speaker.