The Material Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association invites submissions to three proposed sessions at the ASA’s Annual Meeting (Montreal, Canada, November 2-5, 2023). We encourage proposals that connect meaningfully with the conference theme: “SOLIDARITY: WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE IN PUBLIC”
[see the conference Call for Papers here: https://www.theasa.net/annual-meeting/years-meeting/years-theme]
We link potential panelists with shared interests in material culture topics to encourage the formation of strong material culture-related panels. If you, your colleagues, or graduate students are considering proposals for the conference, please email us your panel idea or paper abstract and we will work to connect you with similar panelists and papers. We are also happy to offer suggestions on complete panel proposals.
Furthermore, we welcome suggestions for material culture-related site visits or field trips near the conference venue and related to the CFP.
Please read about each of the submission options below and, if interested, send the materials requested to co-chairs of the Material Culture Caucus, Mariah Kupfner and Sarah Carter, at ASAMCCaucus@gmail.com by January 2, 2023.
Please put either “ASA proposal for scholarly paper/panel,” “ASA proposal for pedagogy roundtable,” or “ASA proposal for museums/collections panel” in the subject line. If you are particularly interested in having help locating other potential participants in a panel, please reach out before the submission deadline.
The MCC will provide its decision on sponsored panels and roundtable participants by January 15th. Panelists will then be responsible for following all posted instructions and for submitting their own panels or papers in proper ASA format to the ASA by the ASA deadline (February 1, 2023).
For more ASA instructions on proposal submission, see: https://www.theasa.net/node/5681
Material Culture Caucus Panel Session:
The “Solidarity: What Love Looks Like In Public” theme of this year’s panel asks us to consider the connections among “love,” “justice,” “solidarity,” and “public life.”
The Material Culture Caucus invites proposals for conference papers, especially from emerging scholars, that address this wide-ranging and potent conference theme through analysis of material evidence—broadly defined—of past, present, and even future material visions of care, solidarity, and justice. Please submit a paper abstract (maximum of 500 words per abstract) and a 350-word (or less) biographical statement. Some possible themes include, but are not limited to:
- Love and property (from the ASA CFP: “Love relations are so often ensconced in property. What do they look like without this scaffolding? What does a practice of love look like?”)
- Material culture of social justice organizing
- Material histories of love and care
- Material culture of work and labor
- Object-based histories of community
- Material culture related to the location of the conference (Montreal) and thinking about this “border-land”
- Object-based epistemologies that unsettle dominant frameworks/ways of knowing
Material Culture Caucus Pedagogy Session:
The Material Culture Caucus welcomes brief proposals of topics (including individual submissions) for participation in a roundtable or skill sharing session on material culture-centered teaching across fields and disciplines, including classroom methods, assignments, projects, exhibitions, and other forms of outreach or hands-on learning that employ material culture. The session may feature short-presentations by participants followed by a moderated discussion.
Please submit a paper abstract (maximum of 500 words per abstract) and a 350-word (or less) biographical statement.
Some possible themes include, but are not limited to:
- How can we think about object-based inquiry and its ability to foster pedagogies of care, justice, and solidarity?
- Material Culture, affect, feelings, subjectivity, and object-based engagement? How do we think about the degree to which love, community, relationships, affective histories may be embedded within, implied by or activated by material things... Is there space for this affective engagement with things within material culture practice and pedagogy?
Material Culture Caucus Museums, Archives, and Collections Session:
“What is solidarity among us? Reterritorialization, reparation, restoration, wealth redistribution, networks of care? What is solidarity’s chief practice? How does it look in public? How does it bend toward or create justice in real time?”
What would it look like for museums, archives, and collections to become sites of justice and care? We invite proposals from community organizers, scholars, practitioners, collections managers, etc for a session that asks us to consider the roles, responsibilities, and possibilities of collections (considered broadly) as sites for community history, self-determination, and activism. What would this look like in practice? The conference theme also invites a rigorous engagement with ideas about failure. How have sites of material culture stewardship failed to enact solidarity or create communities of care? How might they be re-envisioned to support this kind of justice work?
We encourage presentations that focus on reinterpretations of collections; repatriation, cultural patrimony, and post-custodial practice; community-based collections and collaborations; ethical cataloging, curation, and interpretation; care-informed collections management strategies; histories of community collections; decolonizing/anticolonial work in museums; museums as sites of historical memory and inheritance; museums as sites of justice work.
Please submit a paragraph outlining your proposed contribution to this conversation (maximum of 500 words) and a 350-word (or less) biographical statement.
NB: All interested parties who email us will still be responsible for following all posted instructions for submitting their own panels or papers to the ASA by the ASA deadline (February 1, 2022). For more ASA instructions on proposal submission, see: https://www.theasa.net/node/5681
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