Call for Papers
Special issue of the Journal of Design History
The Ghosts of the Profession: Amateur, Vernacular and Dilettante Practices
and Modern Design
Guest Editor: Gerry Beegan, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
From the Arts and Crafts movement onwards architects and designers have
evoked various types of vernacular approaches as ways of critiquing or
enriching their disciplines. At the same time that professional institutions
acted to both define and exclude the dilettante and the vernacular these
practices became spaces of resistance to homogeneity and industrialization,
spaces that could be used to denounce the alienating effects of modern
production and professional specialization. The traditional vernacular, the
industrial vernacular, and the commercial vernacular differed in their
methodologies and in their function, but at various points over the past 150
years critics and designers characterized them as more authentic, more
honest, and more direct than professional practice. This collection will
make it clear that the non-professional and the vernacular are central to
the project of modern design. This issue will gather together contributions
that investigate the complex relationships and connections between
professional and non-professional practice across design and architecture.
Essays will address the geographical, disciplinary and historical breath of
this complex subject. Contributions are particularly sought that relate to
locality, ethnicity and nationality, the definition and role of women as
amateurs, and the curatorial and publication practices of institutions such
as museums and trade magazines in situating the amateur and the professional.
Please send questions and abstracts of 300 words to Gerry Beegan,
[log in to unmask] by 1 December 2006. Finished essays will be due on 1
March 2007. Please note that all essays will be subject to the usual
refereeing and selection procedures of the editorial board of The Journal of
Design History. All essays should be submitted according to the Instructions
to Authors, which can be found at
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/design/for_authors/index.html
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