Considering the intersections between visual culture and criminal justice, this panel seeks to address how scholars and artists can engage in questions of social justice and activism responsibly. As issues of policing, criminal justice, and mass incarceration reach unprecedented heights around the world, this panel foregrounds papers offering insights into how we as art historians, artists, critics, museum curators, and educators might intervene to affect change. What methodological and pedagogical shifts to our practices do we need to make in order to ensure that historical inequalities and prejudices are not replicated when engaging in issues of social justice and activism? How should we reflect on our positions within the academy, the museum, or the studio to dismantle internalized personal and disciplinary biases as a means to activate the frameworks of our disciplines to contribute different perspectives in the production of a new social landscape? What critical terms need to be established when art engages social justice? And, when do we fail in our attempts at activism? This interdisciplinary panel seeks to foster a conversation about visual culture and criminal justice to explore the various ways in which policing, prisons, prisoners, mass incarceration, and their visual and material culture have been represented, portrayed, studied, displayed, and collected. Papers presented by practitioners in all arenas of the arts will address how art historians, artists, critics, museum curators, and educators have consciously reframed their practices to encourage reflection, support dialogue, and respond to changes in judicial systems and social activism across time.

Information about how to submit a paper proposal according to CAA's guidlines may be found [here]. Please read carefully.

Please submit paper abstracts by emailing the co-charis: Dr. Courtney Skipton Long, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Yale Center for British Art ([email protected]); Risa Puleo, Independent Curator and Art History PhD Candidate at Northwestern University ([email protected])