"Mirror, mirror on the wall..." The fascination is unbroken and without a doubt the mirror represents one of the most established metaphors for questions of visuality, imagery and cognition. Mirrors produce images, multiply perspectives, and enable insights that affect self-perception and the perception of others. The history of the sometimes diametric semantizations of the mirror and its speculations, species, and reflections rests on these practices of mirroring and reflecting, just as theories of the mirror and its imagery have shaped the ways in which mirrors and artifactual images have been perceived.
This is not a new observation. On the contrary, there is a long history of research on the mirror in the arts and humanities. Against this background, the idea of the digital workshop is to bring together current research on the cultural history of the mirror and its metaphors. The workshop character of the event thereby will be taken seriously in that rather raw theses, unpolished questions and new materials should to be the focus. The event is therefore planned as a closed workshop, but interested researchers without an own contribution are also welcome.
We ask for contributions from the following and other relevant fields:
- Object history and technical history of the mirror
- Historical practices of mirroring
- Natural history of the mirror
- Mirrors in image and art theory
- Metaphorology of the mirror
The workshop will take place in digital form on June 17 and 18, probably via Zoom. We ask for German or English abstracts of no more than 300 words for either a 30- or 20-minute talk or for a short statement on the above and other connectable topics by March 15, 2021 to the following addresses: sandra.hindriks@univie.ac.at and maurice.sass@alanus.edu