Call for Session Proposals: Heritage Across Borders - Association of Critical Heritage Studies, 4th Biennial Conference

Heritage Across Borders - Association of Critical Heritage Studies, 4th Biennial Conference

1-6th September, 2018, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Call for Session Proposals
Deadline 31st March, 2017

The global rise of heritage studies and the heritage industry in recent decades has been a story of crossing frontiers and transcending boundaries. The 2018 Association of Critical Heritage Studies conference, held in Hangzhou, China, thus takes 'borders' as a broadly defined, yet key, concept for better understanding how heritage is valued, preserved, politicised, mobilised, financed, planned and destroyed. Thinking through borders raises questions about theories of heritage, its methodologies of research, and where its boundaries lie with tourism, urban development, post-disaster recovery, collective identities, climate change, memory or violent conflict. Held in the city of Hangzhou, China, Heritage Across Borders will be the largest ever international conference in Asia dedicated to the topic of heritage. It has been conceived to connect international participants with local issues, and in so doing open up debates about the rural-urban, east-west, tangible-intangible and other familiar divides.

Borders tell us much about the complex role heritage plays in societies around the world today. Historically speaking, physical and political borders have led to ideas about enclosed cultures, and a language of cultural property and ownership which marches forward today in tension alongside ideals of universalism and the cosmopolitan. More people are moving across borders than ever before, with vastly different motivations and capacities. What role can heritage studies play in understanding the experiences of migrants or the plight of refugees? And what heritage futures do we need to anticipate as the pressures of international tourism seem to relentlessly grow year by year?

Heritage Across Borders will consider how the values of heritage and approaches to conservation change as objects, experts, and institutions move across frontiers. It will ask how new international cultural policies alter creation, performance, and transmission for artists, craftspersons, musicians, and tradition-bearers.

What are the frontiers of cultural memory in times of rapid transformation? How can museums engage with increasingly diverse audiences by blurring the distinctions between the affective and representational? And do digital reproductions cross important ethical boundaries?

One of the key contributions of critical heritage studies has been to draw attention to the role of heritage in constructing and operationalising boundaries and borders of many kinds-national, social, cultural, ethnic, economic and political. In what ways do international flows of capital rework indigenous and urban cultures, and reshape nature in ways that redefine existing boundaries?

We especially welcome sessions and papers that challenge disciplinary boundaries and professional divides, and explore cross-border dialogues. What lessons can be learned from Asia where the distinctions between the tangible and intangible are less well marked? And how can researchers bridge cultural and linguistic barriers to better understand these nuances?

Organised by Zhejiang University this major international conference will be held in Hangzhou, China on 1-6 September 2018. We welcome session proposals which address the conference theme of boundaries and borders, and cluster around the following suggested sub-themes:

Subthemes:
Heritage Trafficking
Negotiating linguistic borders
Heritage and human/non-human relations
Museums challenging boundaries
Crossing the indigenous/non-indigenous divide
The heritage of diaspora and refugees
The planned and unplanned spaces of heritage
Boundaries of digital reproduction
Memory and forgetting
Geographies of Craft
Asia and the world

Extraterritorial heritage

Regular Sessions
Heritage across disciplines
Nations, Regions, Territories
Theorising heritage as border
Tangible and intangible
Connecting the rural and urban
China and the region (One Belt One road)
Cross cultural methodologies
Nature-cultures
Cross border conflicts and cooperation
Bridging practice and academia
Past/present/future
Gender and heritage

Regular Sessions will be allocated one or more standard blocks of 1.5 hours, which will usually consist of four papers of 20 minutes duration (normally 15 minutes for each paper with 5 minutes following each paper for discussion and the remaining ten minutes in each block used for introductory and concluding remarks). Proposals for regular sessions should include the following details:

session type (i.e. regular session);
a session title;
the names, affiliations and contact details of one or more session organisers/co-organisers;
up to 300 word session abstract;
a list of confirmed speakers, contact details and paper titles;

an indication of whether the session will be closed or open to advertisement for further participation via the conference website when we call for individual paper submissions.
Panel Discussions

Panel Discussions will be allocated a standard block of 1.5 hours and will normally consist of a discussion amongst a group of 4-5 panellists around a specific set of questions or themes. Proposals for panel discussions should include the following details:
session type (i.e. panel discussion);
a panel title;
the names, affiliations and contact details of one or more panel session organisers/co-organisers;
up to 300 word panel session abstract;

a list of 4-5 confirmed speakers and their affiliations and contact details.
Please send your session proposals to the following email address: 2018achs@zju.edu.cn

For more information please visit the Conference Website