CfP: Venice and Fascism. Museums, Exhibitions, and the Art Market
Deadline: 18 January 2026
For the Fascist regime, Venice was above all a showcase in which to stage Italy's cultural primacy within Europe. Alongside major infrastructural works new cultural initiatives emerged, including the strengthening of the newly-nationalized Venice Biennale. The creation of new museums and the reorganization of existing ones represented an attempt by the Superintendency to respond to the gradual disintegration of Venice's historic private collections.
The conference aims to investigate the cultural, historical, and political identity of Fascist Venice through the lens of exhibitions, museums, and the art market. In contrast to the existing scholarship – largely focused on the role of the Biennale and contemporary art – we adopt a broader and more integrated perspective on the history of collecting, including not only artistic collections, but also archaeological, ethnographic, natural history, and cultural-history collections. Through this expanded approach, we intend to foster an interdisciplinary reflection on how Fascism shaped Venice's cultural landscape through the interrelation of art history, colonialism, and political and economic history.
International conference, Venice, 7–9 October 2026
Languages: Italian, English
Download call for papers here.
Please submit your proposal (max. 300 words, in English or Italian) and a short biographical note (max. 100 words) by 18 January 2026 to: Matilde Cartolari (m.cartolari[at]zikg[dot]eu), Francesca Castellani (fcast[at]iuav[dot]it), Katharina Hüls-Valenti (k.huelsvalenti[at]dhi-roma[dot]it).
CfP: Comparative Perspectives on Genetic Criticism in Music
Deadline: 18 February 2026
The IMS Study Group Comparative Perspectives on Genetic Criticism, founded in 2025, invites proposals for its first international conference at the DHI Rome. The conference seeks to take stock of current research questions, methodological approaches, and terminological frameworks in genetic criticism and sketch studies in music, while explicitly exploring their comparative potential across composers, repertoires, and research traditions.
Over the past decades, research on creative processes in music has expanded significantly. This growth, however, has been accompanied by an increasingly heterogeneous and often incompatible terminology. This "genetic-critical Babel" (Grésillon, 1994) impedes the dialogue between projects and research groups even more. The conference therefore deliberately challenges participants to share ideas and experiences toward comparative sketch studies and to foster methodological and terminological exchange by foregrounding comparative perspectives on compositional processes.
International Conference: 16–18 November 2026 at the German Historical Institute in Rome
Conference languages: German, Italian, English, French
Download call for papers here.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, together with a short biographical note (max. 100 words) by 18 February 2026 to elisa[dot]novara[at]dhi-roma[dot]it.
