CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS: Material Culture, Craft & Community: Negotiating Objects Across Time & Place
20-21 May 2011: Material Culture Institute, University of Alberta
This interdisciplinary conference will explore the varied expressions of craft –material, cultural, social – in past and present societies. Craft practice has a rich history and remains vibrant today, sustaining communities while negotiating cultures. Craft-made goods were, and are, created for domestic or institutional use, for local or international markets. They express gender roles and cultural aspirations, sustain economies, and express aesthetic values and skills of making. Craft practice has long defined communities and groups, and continues to do so in the midst of global trade networks. Moreover, the flow of ideas, goods, and peoples animate the making, circulation, and meaning of craft goods. These and other issues will be addressed over the course of the conference.
Call for Papers:
Paper proposals and full panels are invited on topics ranging from the history to present practice of craft, issues of production, use, and trade of craft, and the construction and interpretation of the meanings of craft, in the context of personal interactions, local communities, national groups, modes of international circulation, and forms of cultural context.
Graduate students are encouraged to apply with either single papers or panels. Three graduate proposals will be selected for a special graduate plenary session, in addition to those papers selected for concurrent sessions.
Proposals are invited from all disciplines. The proposal package should include a paper summary of 150-200 words and a two-page CV.
Proposals should be sent to: material.culture@ualberta.ca.
Proposals should be received by: 10 October 2010.
Conference Registration will open on: 15 December 2010.
Keynote Speaker: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University
Confirmed Speakers: Eiluned Edwards, London College of Fashion, UK; Edward S Cooke, Yale University; Janice Helland, Queen’s University, Kingston; Laura Peers, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; Ruth Phillips, Carleton University, Ottawa
Conference Organizer:
Beverly Lemire
Department of History & Classics
and Department of Human Ecology
University of Alberta