67. Oceanic Histories

Art history has largely observed the sea from the shore, picturing it in seascapes, harbor scenes, and images of voyage, yet maintaining, in Hans Blumenberg’s terms, the distance of the spectator from the shipwreck. The Blue Humanities have done much to counter this terrestrial bias, turning to oceans as objects and agents of historical, literary, and cultural inquiry in their own right. This session asks how art history and the study of visual and material culture might consider these fields not from vantage points on land but from the water—attending to not only to how oceans have been pictured, but to the intelligences and practices that have emerged from living, working, and navigating within them. Oceanic environments, even charted waters, are always encountered afresh by both local and visiting voyagers; how and where has their experience manifested in art? What knowledge forms may have escaped disciplinary attention precisely because they are embedded in practice rather than represented as image?

We ask what such visual knowledge and practice look like, and what artifacts, forms, or systems might it ask us to newly consider as art historical. Wayfinding techniques, nautical charts, boatbuilding, rigging, ropework and fibrous material culture, and sailors’ craft practices such as knotwork, tattooing, and scrimshaw suggest some possibilities—but we remain genuinely open to what else might count, and to how the very category of the art historical object might shift when approached from the water rather than the shore. How have oceanic depths and volumes been experienced, represented, and conceptualized? What roles have oceanic and maritime technological, material, social, and cultural dimensions played in shaping objects, images, buildings, communities, and cities along global coasts? More broadly, how can art historical thinking be renewed with intelligences emerging from fluidity, wetness, and continuous motion?

Today, as oceans and the ecologies alongside them face acute risks from anthropogenic climate change, we might ask what oceanic histories have to offer beyond representation. Contributions are welcome from art history, visual studies, design history, and material culture addressing oceans of any geographic scope. Work may engage any historical period and any scale of time—from the micro-historical to the longue durée or deep-time scales.

Themes: ocean, blue humanities, maritime art

Additional format comment: 15-20 minute papers.

Lead Convenor: Adil Mansure, Harvard University, USA

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.