Study Day "National Designs: Intersections of Applied Arts and Polemic Discourse in the Long Nineteenth Century"

This application requests funding to cover travel and accommodation costs for two of the four speakers at the Annual Study Day of the Swiss Society for Semiotics and Cultural Theory (SGKS) 'National Designs: Intersections of Applied Arts and Polemic Discourse in the Long Nineteenth Century'.This study day will investigate the overlap between dynamics of national identity and the trajectory of the applied arts in the nineteenth century. It will address questions about the place of national design in relation to various discourses across Europe and the world that hammered out ideals of national belonging. Did creators in the applied arts subtly contribute their own ideas to the national debates? How did their work reflect the growing and changing consciousness of the nation? And how did they deal with its contradictions, contingencies and exclusions? “National Designs” will examine how the newly formalized artistic professions negotiated statements of national belonging in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and in what ways national polemics interacted with new creations of design.The two speakers to be funded with this application are Prof. Dr. Rebecca Houze (Northern Illinois University) and Dr. Emilié Oleron Evans (Quen Mary, University of London). Both of them are well-established your scholars who have made milestone contributions to the study of national ideas about art and design during the nineteenth century. Their presence at the Study Day, enabled by this grant, would be a real game-changer for this event, and a great contribution to the landscape of scholarly debate in Switzerland. Each of them will make a 45 min presentation on the subject relevant to the theme of the Study Day giving insight into their current research.Parts of the costs of the Study Day will be covered with the support of the Universita della Svizzera italiana (Institute ISA, Chair Hildebrand), the SGKS itself, and the Swiss Academy of Humanities (SAGW). This grant will form the final element in the funding structure that will make it possible for the Study Day to take place as conceived.