{"word_count": 197, "character_count": 1276}
This year’s World History Association’s Conference has a theme on “Diasporas and Refugees in World History”. Because I have long had an interest in establishing more dialog between historians (especially ‘world historians’) and art historians, I propose to organize a panel on artists as political refugees.My own field is Twentieth Century China and I am particularly interested in the first stage of China’s post Mao “opening up” in the 1980s. There have been other artistic refugees in the 20th Century, for instance Russia soon after the revolution (Chagall, Larionov, Kandinsky, etc.) and in the last years of The Soviet Union (Neizvestny, Bulatov, Komar and Melamid) or from Germany in the thirties, (Max Ernst, George Grosz, John Heartfield).But the panel need not, and should not, be confined to visual artists of these particular refugee flows. Dance, music, drama, literature may provide even more interesting cases of altered creativity in a new environment, of preservation or fusion of cultural identity among emigre groups, or of cultural influence in their new locations.Topics need not be confined to the ones listed above. Please send your proposal to Ralph Croizier, University of Victoria, ralphc@uvic.ca by February 1, 2013.Source: H-ArtHist, Jan 14, 2013.