This interdisciplinary conference explores the ”aerial image,” broadly conceived. Drawing upon recent work in the environmental humanities, the conference aims to open critical dialogue around representations of climate, atmospheric pollution, and weather in historical context, as well as prescient studies of the historical intersections of flight, fuel, and aerial image-making practices. In considering the ways that technology, energy, and industrialization have re-shaped aerial spaces since early modernity in Europe and North America, the conference responds to our current moment––marked by the unfolding crisis of anthropogenic climate change and the ongoing deployment of drones and aerial surveillance in both private and military contexts.
Speakers include: Emily Doucet (Toronto), Maria Loh (Hunter), John Harwood (Toronto), Jessica Horton (Delaware), Matthew Hunter (McGill), Amy Knight Powell (UC Irvine), Lynda Nead (Birkbeck), Nicholas Robbins (Yale), Richard Taws (UCL), Alison Syme (Toronto), Chitra Ramalingam (Yale Center for British Art), and Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan).
This conference has been generously sponsored by Yale Environmental Humanities, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarky Kempf Memorial Fund, the Department of the History of Art, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Program in History of Science and Medicine.
Conference organizers: Emily Doucet (Toronto), Matthew Hunter (McGill), Jennifer Raab (Yale) and Nicholas Robbins (Yale).