AAA: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS (due March 7)

American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting

Future Publics, Current Engagements, Chicago, November 20-24^th, 2013

Panel Title: The Museum Provocateur: Community Co-Curated Exhibitions as Experimental Scholarly Praxis

Panel Organizers: Diana Marsh (University of British Columbia)

Rachel Roy (University of British Columbia)

Key Words: Museums, Communities, Exhibitions, Praxis

This panel advocates for critical discussions surrounding innovative and provocative community co-curated exhibitions, which act as catalysts for experimental research. In either their physical and digital forms, and in their associated publications and programming, these exhibitions are illustrative of many years and layers of collaborative research. They are, in turn, integral to perpetuating new thinking and theory in not only the realm of museology and materiality, but in the wider discipline of Anthropology. As Michael Ames famously argued over twenty years ago, museum exhibitions can “be seen to mirror the profession of anthropology itself” (1992: xiii). Yet despite many formative works of the last two decades that have rejuvenated interest and theory in museum display, collaboration and co-curation (Peers & Brown 2003; Karp & Levine 1991; Karp, Kreamer & Levine 1992; Karp et al. 2006; Bennett 1995; Greenburg, Ferguson & Nairne 1996; Edwards 2001; Basu & Macdonald 2007; Schneider & Wright 2006; Simon 2009), exhibitions and their related components continue to be marginalized as research in the field of scholarly production. We therefore call on scholars from a diversity of backgrounds—e.g. artists, anthropologists, art historians, museum professionals, Indigenous community members—for papers, short films, images or small installations that showcase experimental community curated or co-curated exhibitions as research praxis and that interrogate anthropological concepts, encourage dialogue and generate new theoretical paradigms.

Abstracts should be submitted by email to Diana Marsh (marshd@interchange.ubc.ca) and Rachel Roy (rachel.roy@gmail.com) by Thursday, March 7 with the following information:

* Name 

* Institutional affiliation 

* Paper title 

* 250-word abstract 

* Contact information