Call for Papers: Breaking the Silence: Heritage Objects and Cultural Memory

Convenors: Alison Brown (University of Aberdeen) and Maria-Katharina Lang (Austrian Academy of Sciences)  

Art, Materiality and Representation conference organised by the RAI and the British Museum’s Department for Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Clore Centre of the British Museum and Department of Anthropology at SOAS, London, 1-3 June 2018    

In Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, Janet Hoskins (1998) observed that "when words fail us, our possessions speak". Taking this observation as a starting point, the papers in this panel will consider how heritage objects now in museums have the capacity to break silences surrounding cultural and ritual practices that became entrenched during periods of political repression and colonisation. In some regions, for example, those exposed to Soviet rule, Stalinist persecutions led to the confiscation or destruction of objects and the buildings used to house them. In other places, colonial regimes contributed to the disruption of knowledge and of the skills involved in making and using associated objects. In other cases, socio-political upheaval and the resulting dislocation led to people becoming exiled from their homes and material surroundings, sometimes for generations. In such contexts, words may have failed because it was too dangerous to speak. The wounds of these societies are part of the memories and narrations today being awakened during encounters mediated by museums between heritage objects and those who were formerly silenced. Contributors to this panel are invited to consider the stories that such heritage objects can evoke. What challenges to established narratives do they pose? How can they contribute to gaps in knowledge created by political and cultural repression? What is the remedial capacity of such objects? And what are the implications for the museums that house them and for anthropological understanding of the relations between people and things more broadly?

Call for Papers: Context and Meaning XVII: Complete Imperfection, The Graduate Visual Culture Association of Queen’s University

We are pleased to announce the 17th annual Context & Meaning Graduate Student Conference, taking place at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, from Friday, February 2nd to Saturday, February 3rd 2018. We are seeking papers that address this year’s theme, “Complete Imperfection.” The conference will provide an inclusive and broadly defined forum that facilitates academic discussion while encompassing an abundant range of topics. In choosing this intentionally multi-disciplinary theme we would like to encourage discussion about imperfection, impermanence, and ephemerality within Visual Culture Studies.

Some potential themes and ideas to consider may include:

- What does ‘finished’ mean? When is a work finished? When does it fail?

- Collaborative practices, ‘hidden’ voices in scholarly practices 

- Absence/Presence 

- Impermanent, ever-changing, in-flux art

- Art conservation versus restoration

- Imperfect society, failed Utopias

- The unattainability of ideal human beauty

- Nature as an artistic model, ideals of femininity and masculinity

- Technology in art and its limitations 

- Critiquing the canon or hegemonic narratives, alternatives to Euro-American ideals of perfection, debunking the artistic genius

We encourage applications from graduate students working in Art History, Art Conservation, Studio Art, Digital Humanities, Cultural Studies, Museum Studies, Religious Studies, Gender Studies and students from various Humanities fields whose research responds to this year’s theme. This conference is open to both historical and contemporary topics. Submissions are welcome from current graduate students, as well as those who have completed their graduate studies within the last year. We seek to assemble a diverse group of scholars in order to foster interdisciplinary discussions. Presenters will be allotted 20 minutes to deliver their papers, followed by a 10-minute discussion period. A poster session on the conference theme, featuring complete and incomplete research, will also be held during the conference; please see the attached sheet if you would like more information on how to create an academic poster. 

If you are interested in speaking, performing or submitting a poster at Context and Meaning XVII, please email an abstract of no more than 300 words with the title of your paper, along with a separate document that includes a 250-word bio, to gvca@queensu.ca. Please ensure that your name and the title of your paper are included in your letter of introduction and on your abstract. The deadline to submit an abstract will be: Wednesday, November 8th 2017. Thank you to all who apply! 

Call for Papers: Redefining the curator, curatorial practice, and curated spaces in anthropology

Art, Materiality and Representation conference organised by the RAI and the British Museum’s Department for Africa, Oceania and theAmericas. Clore Centre of the British Museum and Department of Anthropology atSOAS, London, 1-3 June 2018

Panel 064: Redefining the curator, curatorial practice, and curated spaces in anthropology
Convenors: Jaanika Vider (University of Oxford) and Katherine Clough (V&A Museum/Newcastle University)

The panel seeks to problematise, locate and define curators and curated spaces in contemporary culture and ethnographic museums in the light of an expanding notion of curation. Special attention will be paid to means in which it can harness the potential of material objects to perform and affect.

We particularly welcome
- papers from museum professionals involved in curating (broadly defined)/ engaging in innovative interventions that challenge preconceived ideas of what museums are
- papers that explore the possibilities emerging from digital technologies
- papers that consider questions of curation from public engagement viewpoint
- papers that engage with the concept of curatorial space

Panel abstract: Humanity’s capacity for producing an excess of material culture continues at fast pace, while the 'information age' society is also faced with managing unprecedented and accelerating data excess. The overwhelming task of selecting from this abundance has led Michael Bhaskar to suggest that 'we're all curators now' (2016: 3). The term 'curation' has become prolific in wider society, applied to an increasing range of cultural forms from festival line-ups to digital curated content. This poses the question of the meaning and role of the professional museum curator, particularly in ethnographic museums that have historically sought to collect everything from the everyday.

Collaborative curation in ethnographic museums and the conception of these spaces as 'contact zones' have increasingly rendered curators of these museums facilitators in cross-cultural conversation. Similarly, Hans Ulrich Obrist has positioned his own role in the Art World as a catalyst that 'brings different cultural spheres into contact' (2014: 24) emphasising relational values over reliance on individual curatorial expertise and subject specialism. 

We take the expanding notion of curation as a central discussion point to explore how broader conceptualisation of the curator and curated spaces can enhance understanding of our collections. In particular, we are interested in how curation can harness the potency and expectancy of photographs, objects and sound to make them 'talk' (Daston 2007: 221) with special reference to emerging digital technologies. We seek to explore how we may redefine the curator, professional practice and curated spaces to facilitate the making of anthropological knowledge and experiences.

To submit a proposal, please send a title, a short summary of up to 300 characters and an abstract of 250 words via the online form by 8 January 2018 at: https://nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2018/conferencesuite.php/paperproposal/6132
Further conference details can be found at https://therai.org.uk/conferences/art-materiality-and-representation. Enquiries are welcome to emails below.
Jaanika Vider (jaanika.vider@anthro.ox.ac.uk)
Katherine Clough (K.Clough2@newcastle.ac.uk)

Call for Papers: Eleventh International Conference on the Inclusive Museum

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the Eleventh International Conference on the Inclusive Museum, held 6–8 September 2018 at the University of Granada in Granada, Spain.

Founded in 2008, the International Conference on the Inclusive Museum brings together a community of museum practitioners, researchers, and thinkers. The key question addressed by the conference: How can the institution of the museum become more inclusive? In this time of fundamental social change, what is the role of the museum, both as a creature of that change, and perhaps also as an agent of change?

We invite proposals for paper presentations, workshops/interactive sessions, posters/exhibits, colloquia, innovation showcases, virtual posters, or virtual lightning talks. The conference features research addressing the annual themes.

For more information regarding the conference click here. 

Call for Papers: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association

NAISA TENTH ANNUAL MEETING

Los Angeles, CA
May 17-19, 2018

The NAISA Council invites scholars working in Native American and Indigenous Studies to submit proposals for:

Individual papers, panel sessions, roundtables, or film screenings.

All persons working in Native American and Indigenous Studies are invited and encouraged to apply. We welcome proposals from faculty and students in colleges, universities, and tribal colleges; from community-based scholars and elders; and from professionals working in the field. We encourage proposals relating to Indigenous community-driven scholarship.

The deadline for proposal submissions is November 1, 2017, 11:50pm EST

The abstract collector site is not yet open, but the link will be shared via email and on our website as soon as it is available.

PLEASE NOTE: The Program Committee limits submissions to one proposed session per person, in order to maximize representation at the meetings. Each person can only be part of one proposal of any kind. The Program Committee reserves the right to disqualify proposals that include individuals who are part of more than one proposal. Someone may however, be proposed to both Chair and present or Chair and comment within one session. Also, someone may organize a panel in which s/he does not have an active role and would be able to present a paper or chair/comment at another time in the program. The Program Committee may recruit panel chairs and commentators from people on successful proposals. No more than two panels can be included in proposals for linked sessions.

Call for Papers: Late-Breaking Session Submissions, AAA 2017

AAA is accepting a limited number of Late-Breaking sessions for the 2017 Annual Meeting that are topical, timely, and especially relevant to current events.

Criteria

Presentations must offer findings that were not available until after the April 18, 2017 general call for papers submission deadline.

Applicants may submit late-breaking abstracts even if they have had another abstract accepted for presentation, but abstracts submitted prior to the submission deadline may not be resubmitted.

Topical themes are

• Cultural Heritage Protection
• Global Health
• Police Brutality and Race
• Politics
• Migration
• Science under Attack
• Other

Proposal Category

There are three formats for Late-Breaking Sessions: Oral Presentation, Roundtable, and Individual Gallery (formerly Poster Sessions). If you are submitting as a group of four to seven people, you may choose either the Oral or Roundtable Proposal Category. If you are submitting as an individual, you must choose the Individual Gallery Proposal Category. 

Oral Presentation Sessions should include

• a session title
• an abstract for the session as a whole (up to 500 words)
• one to two organizers, one to two chairs, zero to two discussants, and four to seven paper presenters
• an abstract from each paper presenter (up to 250 words)
• identify a point person for the group to initiate the submission process in the portal. This person will select the Proposal Category, enter the Session title, enter the abstract for the Session, and provide names and contact information for the presenters
• after this has been completed, presenters in the session will be prompted via email to enter the portal and submit their individual abstracts
• the point person is responsible for submitting the completed Session
• a submission confirmation will be sent to all Session participants

  Roundtable Sessions should include

• a session title
• an abstract for the session as a whole (up to 500 words)
• one to two organizers, one to two chairs, zero to two discussants, and two to seven Roundtable presenters
• individual abstracts are NOT required from Roundtable presenters
• identify a point person for the group to initiate the submission process in the portal. This person will select the Proposal Category, enter the Session title, enter the abstract for the Session, and provide names and contact information for the presenters
• after this has been completed, presenters in the session will be prompted via email to confirm their participation
• the point person is responsible for submitting the completed Session
• a submission confirmation will be sent to all Session participants

Individual Gallery (formerly Poster) Sessions should include

• a session title (this will also serve as your Gallery title)
• an abstract for the Gallery (up to 500 words)
• the individual presenter is responsible for submitting the completed Session
• a submission confirmation will be sent to the individual presenter

Eligibility

All participants must be AAA members in order to submit a proposal. Registration is NOT required at the time of proposal submission. Upon acceptance of the late-breaking sessions, participants will be notified and will need to register for the meeting no later than 11:59 p.m. EDT on October 19. Failure to register by the deadline will result in forfeiture of participation and removal from the program. Non-member guests may be permitted to present under compelling circumstances.

Timeline

The late-breaking abstract submission will be open August 14 and will close at 11:59 p.m. EDT on September 17. Acceptance notifications will go out the week of October 2. Participants will then have a little more than two weeks to register for the meeting, otherwise they forfeit their participation in the Late-Breaking Session.

Instructions

Log in to the Submission site with your AAA AnthroGateway credentials.

Call for Papers: Collections, Collectors and Practices of Representation Special Issue, The Brazilian Journal Sociedade e Cultura

Deadline for submissions: 5 November 2017

The Brazilian Journal Sociedade e Cultura invites potential articles for the special issue: Collections, Collectors and Practices of Representation

Editors: Manuel Ferreira Lima Filho (Universidade Federal de Goiás) e Edmundo Pereira (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro/Museu Nacional).

The journal SOCIEDADE E CULTURA publishes the call for articles for the thematic dossier "Collections, Collectors and Practices of Representation", organized by Manuel Ferreira Lima Filho (Federal University of Goiás) and Edmundo Pereira (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / National Museum). The publication is scheduled for v.21, n.1, 2018). Articles written in Portuguese, English or Spanish will be accepted in accordance with the journal's rules (available atwww.revistas.ufg.br/index.php/fchf), and regarding the topic proposed by the editors, as follows:
The organization of the “Collection, Collectors and Practices of Representation” dossier has as a conceptual subsidy the fact that the generation and administration of 'collections' have been organized in practices linked to multiple projects: disciplinary, development and autonomization of scientific and artistic fields; of power and governability, of invention and audio-visual administration of the nation and the empire. In this context, a set of ethnographic and analytical concerns have been defined, in particular, in the acts of collecting, in the debate about the formation of archives (Museums, Libraries, Herbariums, Zoological and Botanical Gardens); the distinctive organization of the Sciences and the Arts; and, recently, the generation of counter-representations by groups historically represented in regimes of subalternization (indexed in referents as 'primitive', 'traditional', 'folkloric'). These investments, focused on complex symbolic economies, highlight the relationship between researchers and interlocutors in the objectification of 'cultural' and 'natural' diversity (from catalogs of herbal plants and herbs, to collections of objects, and collections of poems, songs and melodies) with the aid of multiple audiovisual technologies for mediation of observation and experience.

In this way, the dossier will focus on articles that give ethnographic attention to collecting processes related to: the critical reflection-synthesis of epistemes from different historical periods and the role of social and natural sciences in national and imperial scenarios; the resumption of 'objects' and 'materialities' in the thematic scenarios of science and the arts; revisions of museum processes related to the organization of collections, technical reserves and modes of exhibition.

Papers may be submitted in Portuguese, English or Spanish. Please use the reference guide (https://www.revistas.ufg.br/fchf/about/submissions…) when preparing your manuscript.

The contributions should be sent directly to the organizers: dossiecolecoes@gmail.com
Submission deadline: November 5, 2017

Call for Papers: ‘Museum universalities in Western cultural capitals in the nineteenth and early twentieth century’

Université de Paris-Nanterre, Friday 17th November 2017
Around 1900, each Western capital offered its visitors, a particular representation of human universality through its collections of arts, archaeology, applied arts and design, natural sciences, sciences and ethnography. Different circumstances had contributed to the expansion of these collections (e.g. colonialism, art markets, donations), so that the acquisition of new objects often anticipated reflection on their epistemological raison d’être within a given institution. In addition, other factors influencing the development of Western museums included: intellectually, the move from Enlightenment’s encyclopaedism to subject specialisms; economically, the industrial revolution and new commercial interests; politically, the emergence of new nation-states and empires; socially, the growth of the bourgeoisie and new entertainment spaces. Hence, all these developments, in parallel to the growth of the collections, prompted discussion on museum taxonomies, and on the display of objects.

At the same time, historians were dealing with similar methodological questions in their own attempts to write universal histories. However, the reciprocal impact of historiographical and museological reflections on ideas of universalities has rarely been explored.

The workshop will bring together researchers from both museum studies and history to stimulate discussion across disciplines and national contexts. We invite proposals for papers relating to:
-Definition of ‘universalities’ in museums – particularly in relation to contemporary developments in historiography, in the philosophy of history, and in the history of disciplines.

-Case-studies from ‘universal museums’ in Europe and North-America –we are particularly interested in discussions regarding museums in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Rome, Philadelphia, New York, Washington DC.

-International exhibitions – in particular their relations with museums and the development of collections.

Important information:
Papers – abstract: 300 words (20 minutes papers)

Deadline for abstract submission: 13th September 2017. Please send abstracts to: universalhistoriesmuseums@gmail.com. Authors will be notified by the 30th September 2017.

Please note: we aim to publish a selection of the papers from the workshops of the ‘Universal Histories, Universal Museums’ research project as a journal special issue.

Call for Papers: Remarkable Things: The Agency of Objecthood and the Power of Materiality, March 2018

Apotropaic art, symbols or objects are those which have – or are reputed to have - the power of averting evil influence or ‘bad luck’.

The very idea of an apotropaic object stands at the centre of theory seeking to concretise objecthood and materiary power. Apotropaic things are, in their very nature, possessed of an agency that both transcends their status as a material object yet is also inextricably tied to it: their physicality enables them to be purposefully placed in liminal spaces or carried close on the body; the materials they are made from carefully chosen and frequently bizarre or rare; their form, shape and construction often highly specific and closely allied to tradition and ‘folklore’.

Therefore, the repellence of forces which are abstract and amorphous relies intrinsically upon the materiality and apparent ‘concreteness’ of specific objects. In turn, the ways in which society, throughout time and across culture, has attempted to reconcile the seemingly dialectical nature of such items stands at an interdisciplinary confluence.
Material of this kind is not confined to any one culture, time or place, thus necessitating interdisciplinary exploration as to the variety of theoretical and methodological frameworks that might assist in unpacking and articulating the status and significance of such objects and - perhaps more importantly - how we have come to classify them. Therefore, this conference is concerned with objects which have, or are perceived to have, inherent 'power' or 'mobility'. It will explore:

The sorts of objects that have been perceived in this way and how objecthood is tied to their interpretation and significance;
The way such objects operate/are believed to operate;
How these sorts of objects construct and convey their power/meaning;
The role these objects have played in different disciplines, both focally and epistemologically;
The ways in which such objects have shaped culture, custom, behaviour, thought and academic discourse;
The ways in which different disciplines have dealt with such objects and their ramifications;
Whether or not we continue to create ‘talismans’, 'fetishes', and ‘relics’, etc., or attribute these concepts to objects extraneously;
Finally, how seminal principles outlined by figures such as Gell, Mitchell and Pietz, who have authoritatively theorised on objecthood and agency, play out practically and contextually. [1]

Such objects might include religious icons, jewellery, biological specimens, clothing, funerary equipment, materia medica, portraiture or relics, and their perceived ‘power’ might be grounded in faith, ritual, superstition, biopolitics, cultural memory, memorialisation, consumerism or even medical adherence.

In our modern era, the nature of ‘objecthood’ is undergoing great change; ‘virtual reality’ and the rise of virtual museums, online collections, 3D printing, and sensory simulation ensure that objecthood, and our [un]changing relationship with it, is as relevant as ever. Amidst the evolving status of objecthood, do we continue to create apotropaia? If so, where might we identify them? How might we extend this concept to scientific, medical or technological 'objects', if at all?

This conference will investigate how recent developments in the study of material religion, neuroarchaeology, semiotics and phenomenology might help us better understand not only such objects themselves, but also their many guises and surprising pervasiveness, as well as our ongoing attempts to typologise and demystify them.


Following the conference, we intend to submit proposal to Warwick Series in the Humanities (in partnership with Routledge) for a collected volume.

CALL FOR PAPERS:
We therefore invite abstracts of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers on topics including, but not limited to:
The breadth and fluidity of the apotropaic as a category of material, and the sorts of material - both ancient and modern - that has been responded to as apotropaia;
The proximity of ‘apotropaic’ (or similar) objects and their conceptualisation to our early understandings of medicine and disease;
The significance and power of naming such objects – ‘apotropaic’, ‘relic’, ‘icon’, ‘totem’, ‘talisman’, ‘fetish’, etc.;
Our need, both socio-culturally and intellectually, to typologise, classify and deconstruct such material;
The role of collectors and collections in our relationship with these objects;
The potential for developments in Neuroarchaeology, Phenomenology, Semiotics and Material Religion to further our understanding of these objects, their function, creation and perception as well as our ongoing intellectual fascination with them;
Whether we can separate the conceptual toolkit and terminology typically used to discuss and categorise these objects from their often-problematic origins in colonialism, racism, and modes of exoticisation or othering;
The role of medicine, science, technology and the rapidly changing nature of ‘objecthood’ in the modern creation, perception and definition of such objects;
The sorts of present-day ‘objects’ which have 'power' over us, or the sorts of objects we invest with similar/‘equivalent’ ‘power’ today.

We also welcome proposals for workshops of between 40-60 mins on particular genres or case studies of material, museum collections or related projects. To propose a workshop, please submit abstracts of no more than 500 words detailing the theme, structure, duration, perceived outcomes including activities/item handling and any specific resources required.

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Patricia Spyer (The Graduate Institute, Geneva)
Dr Lambros Malafouris (Oxford University)

Send all abstracts to remarkablethingswarwick@gmail.com along with your name (if more than one for workshops, please give name of all contributors), title/position, and institutional affiliation.

Deadline for submissions: 1st December 2017

More here. 

Call for Papers: SfAA 2018

The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) invites abstracts (sessions, papers and posters) for the Program of the 78th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, April 3-7, 2018. The theme of the Program is “Sustainable Futures.”

The Society is a multi-disciplinary association that focuses on problem definition and resolution. We welcome papers from all disciplines. The deadline for abstract submission is October 15, 2017.

FILM FESTIVAL AT THE 2018 ANNUAL MEETING
The SfAA proudly announces its second annual film festival! This competitive two-day film festival will take place at the 2018 meeting, and welcomes all kinds of visual anthropology films: documentary, fiction, non-fiction, experimental, and other genres, as long as the films are either ethnographically or anthropologically intended. As the 2018 meeting theme is Sustainable Futures, we welcome films that address this main topic, broadly conceived, as well as films on issues related to the city of Philadelphia or the Mid-Atlantic region. The submitters of selected films must register for the SfAA meetings by October 15, 2017, by submitting an abstract of the film. See here for more information on jurying, acceptance announcements, evaluation processes, and submission requirements.

Call for Papers: Black Portraiture[s] IV

BLACK PORTRAITURE[S] IV: The Color of Silence is the eighth conference in a series of conversations about imaging the black body. We invite artists, activists, and scholars to reflect on the visual expressions of national imaginaries and political ideologies that negate racial differences and render black subjects invisible. Such ideologies are prevalent in Latin America and the Caribbean, where metaphors of mixture (mestizaje or mestiçagem) and racial harmony ignore inequality and discrimination. Similar formulations are to be found elsewhere, however, as in republican France, or among proponents of a post-racial United States, or in references to a South African “rainbow nation”, or in Jamaica’s well-known “out of many, one people” motto. Presenters will engage a range of historical and contemporary topics such as biennales, exhibitions, movements, individual artists and collectives, art markets, politics, tourism, sites of memory, Afrofuturism, fashion, dance, music, film, art, and photography. We invite papers and panel proposals on relevant topics.

The conference will be held Thursday through Saturday, March 15-17, 2018, in Havana, Cuba. As the status of the US/Cuba relations are in flux, more information about travel will be available when the new Administration's policies are enacted. New policies and information will be posted here, as soon as it is available.

Havana, Cuba. March 15-17, 2018.

SUBMIT PAPERS HERE.

Please contact blackportraitures@gmail.com with questions.

Black Portraiture[s] IV is a collaboration with the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Jeffrey DeLaurentis; Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University; New York University’s LaPietra Dialogues, Tisch School of the Arts, and the Institute of African American Affairs.

Call for Papers: Comparative Museologies: The Example of the Asian Arts

Musée de l’Homme, 28th September 2017

In the 19th century, major collections of Asian arts reached European museums. These collections provide useful comparisons of the reception of these cultures in different Western museums. While it is possible to recognise some key moments in the movement of objects from the East to the West (e.g. the discovery of Buddhist antiquities in the mid-century, or the expansion and establishment of colonialisms), the incorporation of these works into existing museum collections, or their interpretation according to scholarly knowledge at the time, differed depending on the range of objects available and the various national scholarly traditions.

One of the case studies of the Universal Histories and Universal Museums project draws on the South Asian collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, including those that were brought to Europe so to be displayed in temporary exhibitions. The research centres on the purposes of museums in acquiring these objects, their use in displays and in public events, and debate around their position in the collections.

This workshop aims to explore the acquisition, inventory, and display of Asian objects in Western museums. The workshop will bring together researchers from ethnography, archaeology, and museum history, to explore the acquisition, display, and reception of Asian Arts in Europe. The workshop will also reflect on object agencies through a session with the objects studied in the Universal Histories and Universal Museums project. We invite papers and posters exploring the agencies that contributed to the collection and display of Asian arts. 

Contributions might consider, but need not be confined to, the following themes:
Collecting and displaying Asian arts in Western museums in the 19th century and the early 20th century
Histories of museums of Asian arts and their collections (e.g. Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet)
Museum collections and the development of ethnography
The impact of temporary exhibitions and universal exhibitions on the creation and development of museum collections, including other object journeys into museums via learned and other societies, private collections etc

Important information:
Papers – abstract: 300 words (20 minutes papers)
Deadline for both papers and posters abstract submission: 1st August.
Send abstracts to: universalhistoriesmuseums@gmail.com.
Authors will be notified by the 10th August.

Note that we will aim to publish the workshops of the ‘Universal Histories, Universal Museums’ research project as a journal special issue.

Call for Papers: Researching Digital Cultural Heritage - International Conference, The University of Manchester

Researching Digital Cultural Heritage - International Conference
Manchester, 30 November - 1 December 2017
#digheritage17

Digital tools, approaches, platforms and experiences have become ubiquitous within cultural heritage research and practice. The diverse facets of heritage that lend themselves to both multi/interdisciplinary and focused disciplinary investigation have made heritage a fertile ground for an abundance of methodological explorations: analogue, digital and hybrid. More recently, a range of digitally mediated frameworks, methods and tools, such as data mining, crowdsourcing, social network analysis, visual analysis, sentiment analysis and research-through-design have been adopted in heritage research challenging, expanding, re-defining and re-imaging the questions, methodologies and analytical approaches we are able to tackle. Although the resurgence of digital approaches within heritage and museum studies triggered the creation of the term Digital (Cultural) Heritage in the late 1990s, the reciprocal relationship between digital research methodologies and heritage and how they interface and shape each other has attracted limited critical attention and interest so far. However, in other fields the convergence of digital and academic research has led to the emergence of new disciplinary areas such as Digital Anthropology (Horst and Miller, 2012) and Digital Sociology (Orton-Johnson and Prior, 2013), the articulation of new ways of practicing research, e.g. Digital Ethnography (Pink et al, 2016) and Netnography (Kozinets, 2009 and 2015) and the rise of the broader fields of Digital Culture and Digital Humanities.

In the face of rapid technological, political and cultural change, which continuously re-shapes our understanding of heritage, there is the need to critically reflect on how we capture and research cultural heritage that is continuously mediated and/or re/constituted digitally. What are the challenges and implications of this research and how does it impact on different notions of heritage? For example, the emergence of digital cultural heritage spaces, objects and practices has prompted discussions about digital materiality; highlighted the ambiguity of digitally-born content as cultural heritage; and propositioned social media platforms and gaming spaces as meaningful research environments for emerging heritage practices.

The capacity of the digital to be both the focus and the method of cultural heritage inquiry raises both methodological and ethical issues in designing, conducting and analysing research in digital cultural heritage. If digital cultural heritage is “a field in which we practice as much as we analyse”, to borrow a phrase from digital ethnography (Pink, Digital Ethnography, p. 6), what does this mean for the methods we use and what kind of new imaginaries of heritage research do these methods enable?

Researching Digital Cultural Heritage proposes a critical examination of established and emerging theoretical, methodological and analytical frameworks in researching cultural heritage spaces, objects, audiences and practices in the digital realm. This includes both the impact that digital media have in developing new research methodologies and frameworks of analysis of cultural heritage; and the practice of researching digitally mediated or digitally constituted heritage objects, spaces and interactions and the environments in which this research takes place.

The conference aims to bring together established and early career academics, students, practitioners and policy makers from fields as diverse as museology, heritage studies, digital humanities, social anthropology, sociology, geography, education, history, archaeology, material culture studies, design, communication studies, cultural studies, media studies and computer science, who are interested in reflecting critically on research practices in digital cultural heritage.

We invite proposals for 20 minute presentations that focus and critically reflect on theoretical, methodological, ethical, or analytical approaches in researching cultural heritage in the digital realm. Indicative themes include:
Current and emerging research design, methodologies, methods and tools in researching cultural heritage in the digital realm (e.g. digital ethnography, social network analysis, visual analysis, sentiment analysis, text mining, big data, data visualisation, digital archives, web and social media analytics)
Digitally enabled collaborative, participatory and reflexive approaches in cultural heritage design, research and practice
Ethical considerations and processes in researching digital cultural heritage
Researching digital materiality in cultural heritage
Researching social media and digital games as cultural heritage
Researching audiences in digital cultural heritage environments
Researching organisational strategies, structures, processes and workforce in digital cultural heritage
Digital/online cultural heritage spaces as research environments

Please download and complete the proposal template and email it to digitalheritageconference@gmail.com

Deadline for proposals: Friday, 21 July 2017

Details about publication plans of conference papers will be announced in due course.
Conference organisers
Dr Kostas Arvanitis, University of Manchester
Dr Areti Galani, Newcastle University
Programme panel
Dr Guyda Armstrong, University of Manchester
Dr Chiara Bonacchi, University College London
Dr Shawn Day, University College Cork
Dr Maria Economou, University of Glasgow
Dr Jenny Kidd, Cardiff University
Dr Stelios Lekakis, McCord Centre, Newcastle University
Bethany Rex, Innovation Insights Hub, University of the Arts London
Dr Mia Ridge, The British Library
Dr Chiara Zuanni, Victoria & Albert Museum

Important dates
Submission of proposals: 21 July 2017
Notification of acceptance of proposals: 31 July 2017
Registration opens: 1 August 2017
Registration closes: 15 November 2017
Conference dates: 30 November - 1 December 2017

Conference venue
University of Manchester (venue tbc)
Conference fee
Standard Registration Fee: £140 (£70 per day)

Student Registration Fee: £70 (£35 per day)

Registration opens on Tuesday, 1 August 2017

Conference email address: digitalheritageconference@gmail.com

More here.

Call for Panel Proposals: Art, Materiality, and Representation, Royal Anthropological Institute

Royal Anthropological Institute, The Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas of the British Museum and the Department of Anthropology at SOAS

Call for Panel Proposals

We are very pleased to announce the call for panel proposals for the fourth of the RAI’s recent major conferences. As before, it will be jointly organised by the RAI and the BM’s Department for Africa, Oceania and the Americas, and held in the Clore Centre of the British Museum. We are also very pleased to be joined by the Department of Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, where a portion of the break-out rooms for the conference panels will be located in the newly refurbished Paul Webley Wing of Senate House.

The RAI welcomes panel proposals on any of the themes below. However, it would not wish to restrict any potential suggestion, and proposals are welcome on any aspect of the theme, whether theoretical or ethnographic. Proposals from any of the sub-fields of anthropology (social anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology or linguistics) are welcome, as are those which draw across disciplines. We would particularly welcome proposals from the museum world, especially papers that reconsider the relationship between museums and anthropology today and in the past.

Amongst the possible areas which may be considered are:

• Recent debates in materiality, representation and relationality.
• Performance and aesthetics
• Heritage, transmission and identity
• Art as ethnographic resource
• The anthropology of creativity and art
• The visual perception of art and recent developments in understanding its biological basis
• Art, craft, technology and the reinvention of tradition in tourist art.
• The changing relationship between archaeology, excavation, nationalism and identity.
• Recent developments in the anthropology of art, including ethnographic or anthropological analysis of western and non-western art traditions, whether historical or contemporary.
• Art, materiality and material culture
• The anthropology of art in the archaeological record, including prehistory.
• The changing place of art in specific geographic locations.
• Commoditisation of non-western art traditions in the west and the place of anthropology and anthropologists within that process.
• Curating and curators, and the interface between museums and academic departments historically and today.
• Cultural property, ownership and representation of ethnographic objects
• Ethnographic museums and their futures, including the consideration of indigenous museums.
• Authenticity and the politics of representation
• Craftsmanship, apprenticeship, and learning to become an artist.
• The consideration or reconsideration of the contribution of particular scholars in the anthropology of art.

Proposals for panels should be made by 30 June 2017 on the conference web-site here. Informal enquiries may be made to admin@therai.org.uk. Call for panels opens on 21 April 2017 and closes on 30 June 2017. Call for papers opens on 29 August 2017 and closes on 8 January 2018. Registration opens on 22 February 2018.

Conference Fee:
Non-Fellow: £190
RAI Member: £170
RAI Fellow: £95
Concessions: £80
RAI Student Fellow: £60

Call for Panel Participation: College Art Association 2018

Call for Panel Participation, CAA 2018 in Los Angeles (Feb. 21-24)
Deadline to apply: August 14, 2017

Please email me with your interest in the panel topic below, and I can send you the full application info. 250-word abstracts are due by August 14. All formats welcome, including duo/trio presentations and performances. Please share.

Intercontinental: Native American and First Nations Artists on the Contemporary Art Stage, Chair(s): Michelle J. Lanteri, The University of Oklahoma, lanteri.michelle@gmail.com

Contemporary artists from Native American and First Nations cultures fuse a complex amalgam of the local and the global in their practices, a concept clearly discussed by scholar Dr. Jolene K. Rickard (Tuscarora) in her 2006 essay titled "The Local and the Global." But too often, the international relevance of these artworks is overlooked by curators in favor of preserving cleanly defined exhibition themes that cordon off indigenous artists of the Americas from the majority of contemporary artists at large. These localized, not globalized, exhibitions form conflicted spaces where diversity is acknowledged, but in contexts separate from the rest of the contemporary art world. Despite this predicament, exhibitions and biennials that include Native American and First Nations artists within the international art stage are taking place, most notably with the participation of Postcommodity (Raven Chacon [Navajo], Cristobal Martinez [Mestizo/Xicano], and Kade L. Twist [Cherokee Nation]) in documenta 14. As well, Dartmouth's Hood Museum mounted an inclusive contemporary art exhibition in 2015, titled "About Face: Self Portraiture in Contemporary Art," which featured works by Cindy Sherman, Chuck Close, Nikki S. Lee, Wendy Red Star (Apsaalooke [Crow]), and others. Thus, this panel considers the multiplicity and overlapping of local and global influences in artworks by Native American and First Nations practitioners, while identifying the local and global reach of particular objects and non-objects via diverse exhibitions, biennials, catalogues, monographs, and the like. Papers presented will also address the problematics of curators' exclusions of Native American and First Nations artists from mainstream contemporary exhibitions.

Call for Papers: Decolonizing Art Institutions (Basel, 20-21 Jun 17)

De Colonizing Art Institutions (Basel, 20-21 Jun 17)
Kunstmuseum Basel, June 20 - 21, 2017
Registration deadline: Jun 19, 2017
Concept: Prof. Dr. Dorothee Richter & Ronald Kolb (MA) in cooperation with Søren Grammel
Contact: ronald.kolb@[at]zhdk.ch

The globally active art world nowadays cultivates an exchange that transcends the boundaries between cultures and continents through so-called global museums or globally operating art biennials and festivals, at least for a certain audience able to travel around the globe. Yet, this should not blind us to the fact that in the end a certain perspective of the Western history of art and culture claims primacy over global contemporary art and especially its market. Museums and art institutions all over the world therefore tend to have a uniform appearance. In format and content alike, they cater to and follow "Western" examples.

The question thus arises of how art institutions and museums could work differently by not taking a supposed, globally prevalent “guiding” culture as their orientation but instead continuing to search for new formats. How can an art institution be conceived? What might a de-colonized institution challenge?

Call for Papers: The Museum as Mirror - Reflections on Encounters between People and Objects

The Museum as Mirror - Reflections on Encounters between People and Objects

Workshop to be held at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (23-24 November 2017)

Call for Papers

The use of selfie sticks in museums and recent museum policies excluding or indeed encouraging the practice have triggered two kinds of concern. On the one hand, the presence of the selfie stick is considered to be a dangerous material extension of the visitor’s body and a potential source of damage and disturbance. On the other hand, its popularity begs the question:  how do visitors bond with objects in museums and what are they identifying with in this seemingly narcissistic engagement with objects, artworks and monuments as they stagger back and forth in order to find the best shot? The museum selfie can be understood as a contemporary metaphor for the visitors' desire to document their own individual and embodied experience of an exhibit. Yet this experience—although seemingly unique and personal—is mediated by the conceptual frames the museum itself embodies, which include: aesthetic delectation, academic inquiry and identity formation. In fact, the museum functions at a critical juncture in the mutually constitutive relationship between the visitor’s body, the material space of physical objects (displays, architecture) and the construction of social and cultural concepts (such as national identity, race, and gender).

A long intellectual tradition has maintained a subject/object divide in Western thinking, which has meant that this juncture remains something of a blind spot. More recently, a turn towards material studies has attempted to blur the conceptual boundaries between people and objects through new perspectives on the social lives of things, thing theory, and affect theory. However, this so-called post-humanist trend tends to focus on the object more so than on its effect on the subject. Just as art historians study the origins and history of objects before they enter the museum, so too must we take seriously the specificity of visitors to museums and their histories and experiences of race, sex, gender, culture, religion, class, queer, trans and other identities. This workshop will aim to put these many modalities of analysis of the subject/object relationship into a more balanced dialogue with a rigorous focus on the intersectional experience of bodies (people and objects) across multiple vectors of identity.  We seek to analyze how material, cultural, social and political construction functions on both sides of this subject/object relationship as both come inscribed with histories and identities and can also change or mutually reinforce one another within the space of the museum.

Encounters between humans and objects in museums are mediated and animated by a number of different factors, which may be culturally shared and transmitted but at the same time are not stable, fixed, or automatic.  These factors include: time, space and culture. The temporality of the encounter may be inflected by the time difference between the origin of the object and the person, time-period, or how time is constructed—for both people and objects—according to paradigms like modernism, classicism or primitivism.  The space of the encounter includes the museum’s location, architecture, mode of display, or purpose (for example, nation building, identity formation, memorial, aesthetic or religious experience).  Finally, we are interested in how the histories, belief systems and cultural codes that are manifested by both people and objects inscribe, or in some cases forbid, their encounter.

We encourage papers that analyze these encounters in museums as portrayed by artists through visual practices such as painting, print, sculpture, film, photography, and performative practices; linguistically in literary accounts; or aurally in music, audio or other formats. We are also interested in more collective attempts to analyze these encounters such as sociological studies or accounts in journals or other media.

   

Applications in English consisting of an abstract of 400 words and a short C.V. in a single PDF should be submitted by July 15, 2017 to alison.boyd@khi.fi.it. Contributions for travel expenses will be available.

   

The workshop is part of the activities taking place within the framework of the Max Planck Research Group Objects in the Contact Zone – The Cross-Cultural Lives of Things.

   

Convenors:

Alison Boyd, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, Postdoctoral Fellow 

Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, director of the Max Planck research group "Objects in the Contact Zone – The Cross-Cultural Lives of Things"

Felicity Bodenstein, musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Postdoctoral Fellow

CFP: Shifting States Conference, AAS, ASA & ASAANZ

Shifting States Anthropology Conference
11-15 December 2017, University of Adelaide

Three anthropology associations (AAS, ASA and ASAANZ) are collaborating to put on an international conference in December 2017, bringing together anthropologists and members from across Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Commonwealth and beyond. The conference is titled Shifting States and you can read the theme here.

The five keynotes are already confirmed and the call for panels is now open, so please read the theme and then the call for panels. Deadline for submissions is 10th May.

More here. 

Call for Sessions: 2017 Indigenous International Repatriation Conference

The Association on American Indian Affairs is pleased to announce that the INDIGENOUS INTERNATIONAL REPATRIATION CONFERENCE: "Journey Home: Empowering Indigenous Communities in International Repatriation" will take place this year at the Isleta Resort & Casino in Albuquerque, NM, September 25-26, 2017. We welcome participants to come together to learn, share and discuss the very important cultural and human rights issue of Indigenous International Repatriation.

Who Should Attend?
We welcome Tribal Elders, Indigenous Traditionalists & Spiritual Leaders, Indigenous Repatriation Representatives, Native Nations, Indigenous Peoples, Federal Agencies, Government Representatives, Tribal Members, Museum Professionals and Representatives and other interested participants, and look forward to having you participate in the conference!


CALL FOR SESSIONS
The AAIA invites proposals for sessions that reflect the theme of the Indigenous International Repatriation Conference: Journey Home: Empowering Indigenous Communities in Repatriation. A typical session will be 1.5 hours and allow for a 20 minute question and answer period or open discussion within that time frame.

ART COMPETITION
Judges for this art call welcome artists and photographers whose works fit into our conference theme, Journey Home: Empowering Indigenous Communities in International Repatriation. Work should reflect the artist's vision surrounding this very important human rights issue. This competition is open to all artists/photographers 18 years of age or older. Entries must be created in any still medium: painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, digital art, prints, fiber art, collage, installations. Artists will be asked to submit a photograph of their artwork and complete the requirements of the art submission online. Submissions will be accepted from April 27 to June 4, 2017.

Call for Papers: International Committee for Museums of Ethnography (ICME) Annual Conference

International Committee for Museums of Ethnography (ICME) Annual Conference

Theme: Migration, Home, and Belonging

Washington, D.C., USA, The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Smithsonian Institution

Conference, October 17-19, 2017

Post Conference tour, October 20-22

ICME is interested in how your museum or research is addressing historical and contemporary concerns related to Migration, Home, and Belonging. We are sending a wide call for papers, which can relate to the theme in a myriad of ways. Abstracts can outline how diverse audiences are making the museum a ‘home’ and how the museum facilitates them finding a sense of ‘belonging’ to their sites. Alternatively abstracts could discuss historical work on collections and consider ‘migration’ from the perspective of object biographies.  

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an excellent location for ICME to address the theme of Migration, Home, and Belonging.  Exhibitions at the NMAI, Nation to Nation: Treaties Between The United States and American Indian Nations for example tell histories of Native presence in the Western Hemisphere.

NMAI raises a range of diverse voices and gives voice to communities that have not been exhibited in a museum setting.  Most importantly, the NMAI speaks of the strength of peoples making new homes and creating spaces of belonging. Migration, Home, and Belonging are universal concepts of socio-culture. These concepts impact the development of the sense of self, sense of place, and sense of other.  The fundamental ideas of community, identity, and shared responsibility create a sense of belonging, therefore a home. Through adversity, peoples have maintained integrity with home and belonging vis a vis (im)migration.

The role of the ethnographic museum is to promote understanding and tolerance of others in innovative ways through the growing collections of material culture, intangible heritage, and interpretative value, which we hold in trust. The conference poses the question of how to make the museum into a place that is inclusive for all voices to be heard in an age of global migration.

We invite you to make your voice heard. Please send us an abstract (200 word maximum) with your ideas for a paper (20-30 minutes) or panel discussion related to the theme. In addition, this year we also welcome proposals (10 minutes) about your current work in the ethnographic museum that lies outside of the main theme. The conference poses the question of how to make the museum into a place that is inclusive for all voices to be heard in an age of global migration.

The following information should be included with the abstract:

Name(s) of Author(s)

Affiliation(s) & full address(es)

Title of submitted paper

Abstract in English (no more than 200 words)

Support equipment required

Abstract submissions should be sent as a WORD document attachment to:

Earring Martin: earringm@si.edu

Ulf Johansson Dahre: ulf.johansson_dahre@soc.lu.se‎

Viv Golding: vmg4@le.ac.uk

Sylvia Wackernagel: swackernagel@yahoo.de

Mario Buletic: mario.buletic@gmail.com

DUE by June 1, 2017.

Conference information 

Details of the ICME conference (Registration forms, registration fee information, hotels, and other details) will be available at the end of April on the ICME web site and in the next ICME News 82: http://icme.icom.museum.

Conference Fee 

Approximately 200 Euros (to be confirmed). The conference fee will cover the printed programme, lunches and coffee breaks, the welcome and farewell party. 

3 day Post-conference tour in New York

The post conference tour fee will be approximately 250 Euros, paying for the bus transport, hotel, meals, and museum admissions.