Myths have long been employed by communities and cultures to understand, mediate, and define the world. Myths communicate shared beliefs, cultural traditions, and collective identities, while simultaneously contributing to the erasure and oppression of otherness. Art and material culture often intersect with myths/mythmaking towards the (de)construction of religious, sociocultural, and/or political beliefs. Images and objects can bridge the gap between the real and the unreal, the tangible and the intangible, imagination and reality. In doing so, images and objects often serve crucial roles in both the substantiation and/or negation of abstract ideas as well as material realities.

The 2023 Graduate Student Symposium of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University will convene to examine and broaden the concept of “myth,” and analyze how art and material culture inflect, perpetuate, and materialize myths. This is an expansive topic, as it includes traditional notions of storytelling and world-building, power plays like propaganda and/or ideology, and the ways in which marginalized or subversive groups can generate community strength through shared histories.

Topics can include but are not limited to:
• Fables, legends, folklore
• Religious, spiritual, and belief systems
• Political, social, and national histories and identities
• Social constructs, normative values
• Storytelling, narration, presentation of the myth
• Sensory interactions between mythical materials and viewers
• Museums as mythmakers