A two-day symposium that investigates histories of Surrealism and issues of gender, sexuality, race and colonialism.
Free and open to the public, this symposium is organized in relation to the exhibition Surrealism at the Harn: A Centennial Celebration. It is supported by the Harn Eminent Scholar Chair in Art History (HESCAH) series in the School of Art + Art History at the University of Florida.
Friday, March 22
3 pm: Opening remarks
3:30 pm
Panel: Surrealism and the Politics of Race and Colonialism
3:30 pm: Terri Francis (University of Miami), “When Negroes Speak of Rivers: Florida, Poetry, and Blackness in Sarah Maldoror’s Aimé Césaire: The Mask of Words and Beyond”
4 pm: Abigail Susik (Willamette University), “Surrealism, Race Traitorship, and the Treason Against whiteness”
4:30 pm: Katharine Conley (William & Mary and Dartmouth), “Listening to Oceanic Objects: Breton’s ‘Xenophiles’”
5 pm: Jillian Hernandez (University of Florida) will moderate discussion
5:15 pm: Break
5:30 pm: Keynote address (reception to follow)
Dr. Patricia Allmer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
“Traumatic Temporalities: Post-War Women Artists and Surrealism”
Saturday, March 23
10 am: Coffee & Tea
10:15 am: Opening remarks
10:30 am
Panel: Gender Ambiguities: The Possibilities of a Trans Surrealism
10:30 am: Jordan Reznick (Grinnell College), “Dismembered Muses and Mirrors that Bite: A Trans Perspective on Gender Variance in Surrealist Art”
11 am: Juno Richards (Yale University), “The Orlando Series: Transgender Art, Decolonial Reckoning”
11:30 am: Margaret Galvan (University of Florida) will moderate discussion
11:45 am: Lunch Break
2 pm
Panel: Yesterdays: Time, Memory, and History in Surrealism
2 pm: Rachel Silveri (University of Florida), “Sapphic Surrealism: Queer Time in Valentine Penrose’s Dons des féminines”
2:30 pm: Jonathan P. Eburne (The Pennsylvania State University), “The Persistence of Amnesia”
3 pm: Adam Jolles (Florida State University) will moderate discussion
3:15 pm: Break with Coffee & Tea
3:30 pm
Panel: Fashioning Femininities: Surrealism’s Women Artists
3:30 pm: Alyce Mahon (University of Cambridge), “Dorothea Tanning’s Green World”
4 pm: Anna Watz (Uppsala University), “Thinking Beyond the One: Ithell Colquhoun’s Decalcomanias”
4:30 pm: Amy Lyford (Occidental College), “Dora Maar: Fashioning the Nude”
5 pm: Gayle Zachmann (University of Florida) will moderate discussion
5:15 pm Symposium ends
Support provided by the Harn Eminent Scholar Chair in Art History (HESCAH) endowment in the UF School of Art + Art History.