The Location of Theory
Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) 2010
Friday, April 30th to Sunday, May 1st, 2010
Brown University, Providence, RI
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Call for Session Proposals
Brown University now invites the submission of session proposals for ‘The Location of Theory’, the third annual meeting of the Theoretical Archaeological Group in North America, at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
While our choice of topic — ‘The Location of Theory’ — offers many interpretive angles and possibilities for discussion, TAG 2010 welcomes sessions on any theoretical subject or controversy. Session organizers will be responsible for selecting speakers, discussants, and organizing abstracts. While various format options are possible and at the discretion of the organizer, we strongly encourage the development of workshops, roundtables, or other innovative styles of engagement that can facilitate discussion and interaction perhaps more effectively than traditional ‘stand-and-deliver’ (individual papers followed by Q&A) sessions.
Sessions must be planned to occupy no more than a half day (3 hours).
The closing deadline for session proposals is December 1st, 2009.
We request the following for each submitted session proposal:
1) The name(s) and up-to-date contact information for the organizer(s)
2) The title and proposed length of the session
3) A description (500 words maximum) of the session’s theme and scope, and of its proposed format (round table, workshop, panel, debate, book discussion, media presentation, etc.)
4) A list of definite (or possible) participants in the session with (where appropriate) titles and abstracts (250 words maximum)
Please submit this as a single electronic pdf document to: tag2010@brown.edu
The deadline for individual papers or other forms of participation (to be submitted directly to specific session organizers) is 15th February 2010. Please see the Call for Papers.
More information available at proteus.brown.edu/tag2010.

Supra Utilitatem: Finding Artistry in Functionality
The University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Kansas at Lawrence
February 26-27, 2010
AT The University of Missouri-Columbia
This year marks the annual symposium organized on alternate years by the graduate students of the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Kansas at Lawrence. The 2010 symposium will be held in Columbia, MO on February 26-27. We invite graduate students to submit papers addressing the co-existent relationship of art and utilitarianism. We seek submissions from a broad spectrum of historical periods, geographical regions, and a wide variety of theoretical approaches. Graduate students in any discipline are welcome to submit papers, provided there is a visual component. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the dialogue and/or tensions between art and function, including issues of ornamentation and craftsmanship, artists’ self-conscious commentary on art and function, architecture, and the decorative arts.
The Keynote Speaker this year is Kenneth Lapatin, Associate Curator of Antiquities with the J. Paul Getty Museum. He holds degrees from Oxford University (M. Stud.), and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.), and areas of specialization are ancient Mediterranean Art and archaeology (particularly the Aegean Bronze Age, Greek and Roman), historiography, forgery, reception, and luxury arts. He has conducted fieldwork in Caesaria Martima (Israel), Rome and Corinth, and his main publications include “Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World”, and “Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History”. Dr. Lapatin is the AIA’s 2009/2010 Joukowsky Lecturer.
All abstracts should be submitted electronically to the symposium committee at ahagsa@missouri.edu and should be no more than 300 words. Deadline for submissions is January 1, 2010 and students will be notified electronically about their acceptance status by January 15, 2010.

A Measure of Place: Space in Text and Context
5-7 February 2010, McGill University, Montreal
Historical and fictional figures alike, from Odysseus, to Neil Armstrong, to thousands of twentieth and twenty-first century refugees, have struggled with a persistent and defining question: where can one be in the world? Implied in this question are both the parallel, complementary question of where one cannot be, and the complex determinants behind habitation, belonging, exile, and other spatial states. The English Graduate Students’ Association at McGill University will consider these and other issues at its 16th Annual Conference, A Measure of Place: Space in Text and Context. “Space” is here understood n material, public, domestic, digital, and institutional terms. What are the politics of space in a climate of diaspora, mass-migration, and genocide? What are the relations and tensions between public and private space in a given text, or at a given historical moment? What does it mean to speak of virtual or digital space? How do we live and perform our subjectivities in space, and what are the ways in which those spaces are policed? How do these overlapping spatial considerations find articulation in cultural practices of artistic, religious, and intellectual expression?
While this conference emerges from the field of literary studies, our contention is that answering these questions demands an interrogation of the very intellectual paradigms from which they are asked; thus, we invite contributions dealing with space from a range of historical, political, theoretical, and disciplinary points of view. Please send abstracts of 300 words or less, together with a short biographical statement of no more than 50 words, to mcgillconference2010@gmail.com by 20 November 2009.
You may propose a paper on a particular topic, which will then be grouped into a panel; alternately, contributors may coordinate to propose panels of two or three papers, so long as all relevant abstracts are submitted together, along with a brief description of the panel, by the 20 November deadline.
Topics to consider include:
-aesthetics of space: auditory, visual, tactile, and aromatic environments
-marginal urban spaces (“slums,” “ghettos,” “vice zones”)
-mobility, disability, and space
-lieux de mémoire; space and nostalgia
-human space and/as natural space; ecocriticism
-cartography, geography, travel, tourism
-the geographical construction of identity; national, local, and transnational spatial narratives; space vs. sense of place
-the uncanny and space; powers over space; exceptional bodies and physical space
-ceremonial and performative spaces; public versus private spaces; the making of publics
-controlling spaces (domestic, public); physical and mental imprisonment; solitary spaces
-gendered and sexualized spaces
-liminal or interstitial spaces; heterotopias; outer space; undergrounds/above-grounds
-textual spaces; author, scribe, and text; digitized textual spaces and cyberspace
-the possibilities and difficulties of representing space in visual and textual media
-spaces of knowledge: the archive, library, clinic, university

Graduate Archaeology at Oxford and the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford invite the submission of proposals for papers and posters to an interdisciplinary conference titled “Death, Disasters, Downturn. The Archaeology of Crises.” Oxford, 24-25 April 2010.
“From plagues to economic collapses, natural disasters to the deaths of loved ones, crisis, in its social, economic, psychological, biological, and ecological manifestations has indelibly shaped human existence. Since it is often in the breakdown of societies that the structures which composed them become clearest, crises provide an especially good window onto how groups have functioned historically. It can affect entire communities or single individuals; it can be confined to a singular time and space or it can reoccur episodically. As some of the most fascinating moments in human history, isolated cases or forms of crisis have been much-discussed among scholars within single fields. Rarely, however, have such debates crossed the boundaries of specific disciplines to be studied in a wider, over-arching context.”
The goal of this conference is to start a discussion about the archaeological study of crises from across disciplines: sciences, archaeology, anthropology, ancient history. The questions we will raise are manifold: what constitutes a crisis? Which groups in the past have been most affected by crises? How can the archaeological record shed light on crises of various magnitudes? Most importantly, how can the archaeology of crisis be used to shed light on societies past and present?
Participation is restricted to graduate students.
Abstracts should not exceed 500 words in length and should be sent as attachments (in PDF format) to: gao@arch.ox.ac.uk
Deadline for abstract submission: Sunday, 6 December 2009.
Selected papers will be published in a volume, as part of the GAO monograph series.
For further information visit: the GAO website (http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/conferences/articles/gao-annual-conference.html)
Regards,
Guido Petruccioli, GAO President.