The Constellations at the University of Pittsburgh are hubs of innovative practice that unite faculty and students across subfields in the History of Art and Architecture department. There are five individual constellations.
Submission Guidelines
Constellations blog posts provide an opportunity for members of the HAA community to showcase ideas and activities that result from our Constellations framework and share accessible and engaging writing about this work with a broader public.
Blog posts often highlight how we work with colleagues and institutional partners in Pittsburgh, nationally, and even internationally. Through these posts, we highlight our engagements with diverse collections and profile the collaborations that make such encounters possible.
The Constellations blog has no editor, but oversight of its content is coordinated by faculty and graduate students each year. In 2023-4, the blog is coordinated by Josh Ellenbogen and Kathryn Carney – please contact them if you would like to propose an individual submission or potential class project using the blog. Management of the site itself is handled by Hannah Powell.
Submitted posts may be edited for clarity and tone. Authors are asked to follow these pointers to minimize the need for revisions. Posts should:
- Be accessibly written at a length of 400-1200 words
- Begin with one image (send this as a separate .jpg upon submission)
- Have a short title of 8-12 words (under 60 characters preferably!)
- Be written in first-person and not in the style of an academic essay (no footnotes please!)
- Connect their topic to one of the Constellations themes (even if only loosely!)
- Not use double spaces after periods or indent paragraphs, and if possible avoid embedded links (especially if they might end up dead!)
- Follow the Pitt Writing Style Guide for further formatting or style questions
Identity and Identification
Agency, community, categorization, the body
Materialities
Extraction, production, preservation, media
Mobility and Circulation
Making, consumption, exchange, networks
Reparation
Redress, resistance, reciprocity, equity
Space and Place
Environment, agency, landscape, building
Constellations Themes (2010-2023)
The Constellations are an ever-evolving set of research themes taken up by the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Prior to the Spring 2023 adoption of the themes listed above, the Constellations were constituted as follows:
Visual Knowledge
image/text relations, representational theory, historiography, museums, media
Agency
ritual, cult objects, idolatry and iconoclasm, patronage, collecting, propaganda
Identity
monuments and memory, communities and polities, publics, gender, ethnicity, class, race
Mobility/Exchange
migration, pilgrimage, exploration, tourism, frontiers, contact zones, trade and consumerism
Contemporaneity
world picturing, cosmopolitanism, temporality, tradition, and modernity
Environment
landscape, urbanism, gardens, ecocriticism, historic preservation, architectural history and theory