CfP: Global Caricatures, Cultural Misunderstandings, and the Visual Mediation of the World

Conference | October 5–7, 2026 | Tbilisi

Organized by the Max Weber Foundation – Georgia Branch Office and the Global History of Caricatures Network

Venue: Max Weber Foundation – Georgia Branch Office Tbilisi, Georgia
Submission Deadline: 10 June 2026

Conference Theme
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rapid expansion of global communication networks fundamentally transformed how societies perceived and imagined the wider world. Telegraphy, illustrated newspapers, news agencies, and mass-circulation print media enabled distant wars, revolutions, colonial conflicts, and diplomatic crises to circulate across continents with unprecedented speed. Yet global news did not produce uniform understandings. Rather, it was selectively translated, reframed, visualized, and appropriated within distinct local, imperial, and transnational contexts.

This 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.

Particular attention will be devoted to processes of cultural misunderstanding: moments in which globally circulating events, images, stereotypes, and narratives underwent semantic transformation through local acts of interpretation. Such misunderstandings were not simply failures of communication, but productive processes through which societies positioned themselves within global modernity.

By bringing together scholars working on Europe, the Caucasus, the Ottoman world, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, the conference aims to contribute to a decentered and globally connected history of visual media.

You can find more information here.

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