Submission Deadline: June 10, 2026
Organized by Max Weber Foundation – Georgia Branch Office and the Global History of Caricatures Network
The conference explores caricature and visual satire as central media of global interpretation. Moving beyond approaches that treat caricatures merely as illustrations of political opinion, the conference conceptualizes caricature as an epistemic medium that actively shaped social imaginaries, mediated cultural encounters, and generated forms of political and cultural knowledge.
The organizers invite proposals addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
Global circulation of caricatures and visual tropes
Caricature and the mediation of global news
Cultural misunderstanding and visual translation
Satire, empire, and colonial visuality
Caricature in imperial peripheries and semi-peripheries
Transnational visual repertoires
Illustrated periodicals and global modernity
Caricature and nationalism
Visualizations of the “Other”
Caricature and multilingual publics
Visual satire and revolutionary movements
Comparative histories of satirical journals
Image transfer between Europe, the Ottoman world, the Caucasus, and colonial contexts
Caricature and race, class, gender, and religion
Visual humor and censorship
Digital humanities approaches to caricature archives
Theoretical approaches to visual media and social imaginaries
The organizers especially welcome contributions that combine textual and visual analysis, comparative perspectives, or multilingual corpora.
Please submit:
Abstract (300–500 words)
Short biographical note (max. 150 words)
Institutional affiliation
Contact information
Please indicate in your application whether you need financial support for your participation.
Deadline for submissions is June 10, 2026. Applicants will be informed about the decisions and further details on June 15, 2026.
Participants will be notified until the end of May.
Please send your proposals to info@mws-georgia.org.
Read the full CfA here: https://mwsgeorgia.hypotheses.org/files/2026/05/CfP_2026-Global-Caricatures-Cultural-Misunderstandings-and-the-Visual-Mediation-of-the-World_Tbilisi.pdf