USC INTERDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE

CALL FOR PAPERS:

“The Edges of the Body: Extremities and Knowledge in Antiquity and Beyond.”

Jan. 31- Feb. 1, 2014: University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Department of Art History and Department of Classics
Conference organizers: Rachel Amato, Matthew Chaldekas, Robert Matera, Ambra Spinelli

Deadline for abstract submission: November 10, 2013

Keynote speakers: Prof. Amy Richlin (Department of Classics, UCLA); Prof. Patricia Simons (History of Art, University of Michigan)

The combined graduate students of the Departments of Art History  and Classics at USC invite submissions for a graduate student conference: The Edges of the Body: Extremities and Knowledge in Antiquity and Beyond. Cultures make different assumptions about what we can know from or through the extremities of the body. We propose to explore how societies from antiquity to the present
have understood the relationship between knowledge and body. In Greco-­‐Roman antiquity, we see the castration of Uranus as the end  of  an antediluvian  era and Scaevola’s right hand as a symbol of nascent Roman nationalism. In the Renaissance, master painters make claims about their virtuosity and identity through the presentation of isolated heads and hands. In the nineteenth century, Rodin’s bronze casts of torsos and backs recall the value long attributed to bits of antique sculpture while also indicating a new aestheticization of the fragmented body for the art market, a trend whose continued relevance might be found in Damien Hirst’s 2007 sale of diamond-­‐encrusted skeletal remains. Examples of topics to discuss include:

•  Heads, hands, genitals, et al. that contain the agency of an individual as well as specific knowledges or special abilities (e.g. a “green thumb”)
• The isolation of extremities whose form or size reveals specific character traits (physiognomy)
• How aesthetic values are ascribed to body parts (the valuation of color, size, shape, etc.)
• Different means of negotiating the boundaries between inside and outside the body
• The surface of the body as a space for cultural inscription/self-presentation
• Ideological struggles (e.g. gender, race, citizenship, etc.) waged symbolically through body parts

Submissions from all disciplines are welcome; priority, however, will be given to papers that use both literary and material evidence.
Please send proposals (300 words max.) for 15-minute papers on these or similar topics along with a current CV to edgesofthebody.usc2014@gmail.com no later than November 10, 2013.

The Graduate Visual Culture Association of Queen’s University presents

CONTEXT AND MEANING XIII:

We are pleased to announce that the thirteenth annual Context and Meaning graduate student conference will take place at Queen’s University on Friday, January 31st and Saturday, February 1st, 2014. This year’s theme is “Contact” and we invite students to submit proposals for papers on issues surrounding contact as expressed through visual and material culture. We are interested in exploring this theme in a variety of contexts, including, but not limited to:
• Cross-cultural contact (imperialism, colonialism, diaspora, diplomacy)
• Physical contact (human-object contact, conservation, ceremony, performance)
• Temporal contact (the appropriation of a visual style from one period to another, alternative visions of the future, time and space)
• Collaboration (workshops, artist to artist, artist and curator, conservator and academic and artist, institutions, community-based initiatives)
• Correspondence or exchange
This conference is open to both historical and contemporary topics, and may relate to things considered “fine art” as well as those encountered everyday. Submissions are welcome from graduate students, as well as those who have completed their studies within the last year, from across Canada and the United States who conduct research in all disciplines that engage with visual and material culture. In light of our theme, we seek to assemble a diverse group of scholars in order to foster interdisciplinary discussions.
Each presenter will be allotted twenty minutes to deliver her or his papers, followed by a ten-minute discussion period. If you are interested in speaking at Context and Meaning XIII, please email an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a brief letter of introduction, to gvca@queensu.ca. As a blind panel will review all submissions, please ensure that your name and the title of your paper are included in your letter of introduction, but that your name and other identifying marks are left off the abstract.

Deadline for submissions: Wednesday, November 13th, 2013.

If you have any questions concerning the conference, please contact us at gvca@queensu.ca.
Graduate Student Conference Committee
Graduate Visual Culture Association
Department of Art, Ontario Hall
Queen’s University
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6
Canada

2014 Call for Papers and Program Guidelines

Members of the American Schools of Oriental Research are invited to present their research and new discoveries in one of four venues:
1. ASOR Sessions: Present a paper in one of the ASOR Sessions, sponsored by the Program Committee to provide venues for the presentation of new research in the broad temporal, regional, and disciplinary areas represented in the ASOR membership.
2. Member-Organized Sessions: Propose a new Member-Organized Session or present a paper in an existing Member-Organized Session, organized by ASOR Members who wish to explore a specific topic or theme at the Annual Meeting for a term of one to three years.
3. Workshop Sessions: Propose an interactive Workshop Session organized around a tightly focused topic or theme or around an archaeological site; in these, oral presentations and/or demonstrations are kept to a minimum in favor of open discussion between workshop chairs, presenters, and members of the audience.
4. Projects on Parade (the Poster Session): “Get the word out” about your research in this informal venue, designed to provide student and junior members an opportunity for greater involvement in the ASOR Annual Meeting.

More information at http://www.asor.org/am/2014/call-for-papers.html

Call for Papers:

31st Annual New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Student Conference

“Islands of the Medieval World: Stories of Isolation and Connectivity”

Saturday, March 15th, 2014

The 31st Annual New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Student Conference is requesting submissions for its annual conference that will take place at Brown University on Saturday, March 15th, 2014. In the spirit of connectivity, the conference encourages dialogue across and between disciplines by bringing together scholars with widely varying interests.
The keynote address, “Island Hopping: Trade, Ethnography, and Religion in the Indian Ocean World of Late Antiquity” will be presented by Joel Walker, the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington. His lecture will explore the intertwined ethnographic and mercantile traditions of the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean from the Hellenistic era into the medieval Islamic world.
This year’s conference will engage with issues of isolation and connectivity, both real and imagined, from Late Antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Contributors are encouraged to interpret this theme broadly. We encourage papers from a variety of disciplines, including:
Anthropology – Archaeology – Art History – Byzantine Studies – Classical Studies – Comparative Literature – History – History of Science – Islamic Studies – Language Studies –Literary Studies – Musicology – Philosophy – Religious Studies – Syriac Studies – Theology – Urban Studies – Women’s and Gender Studies
Potential topics may include but are not limited to:

• Culture, society, economy, religion and other aspects of life on actual islands in the Middle Ages (Crete, Cyprus, Sicily, Prince’s Islands, Aegean Islands, Britain, etc.)
• Physical and social isolation: pockets of sub-cultures, minorities
• Religious isolation: holy mountains, asceticism, monastic “islands” and desertum
• Islands of languages, such as particular dialects that emerge and are used only in specific contexts
• Reaching the isolated: medieval missionaries, travelers’ accounts
• Connectivity: social networks, trade/shipping networks and routes
• Urban islands in feudal seas: town and the countryside
• Legal isolation: laws enforced on various social groups
• Literary depictions and descriptions of isolation
• Archaeological approaches to isolation: GIS-based studies, topographical surveys

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for 15-20 minute papers should be e-mailed to Alexis Jackson at nemsc2014@gmail.com. In addition to the abstract, please include a Curriculum Vitae with full contact information. Deadline for submissions is Wednesday, November 20th, 2013.
Participants will be notified by December 10th.
For more information, please contact Alexis Jackson at nemsc2014@gmail.com.

CALL FOR PAPERS

PEOPLE IN MOTION: MOBILITY, MIGRATION, AND EXCHANGE

4th Annual UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Graduate Research Conference

February 7-8, 2014

Featuring a Keynote Address by David W. Anthony, Hartwick College
The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology invites abstracts for its annual conference, to be held at the UCLA Campus, Los Angeles on February 7-8, 2014. Presentations should be 20 minutes in length and address a topic linked to issues of mobility, migration, or exchange.
This conference seeks to highlight a dynamic past, one all too easily lost when considering the archaeological record. Just as in modern times, people and artifacts in the past were constantly in motion.
This conference will consider topics ranging from the movement of a particular culture or artifact (i.e. colonization, Neolithic obsidian trade), to the technologies of movement (i.e. roads, ships, domesticates), to identifying mobility in the archaeological record (i.e. seasonality, nomadism).
We welcome proposals from graduate students from all institutions who wish to examine any aspect of motion in the past. We especially encourage papers that demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach to the archaeological record. To this end, we encourage applicants from fields outside of archaeology whose research interacts with material culture or offers a relevant theoretical framework.
Abstracts for individual papers should clearly demonstrate the presentation’s relation to the conference theme and should not exceed 250 words.
Submissions may be sent to CIOAconference2014@gmail.com no later than November 15th, 2013. Accommodations with UCLA archaeology graduate students are available upon request.
 

S10 Archaeology at large: embracing massive audiences for online applications

Chairs : J. Andrew Dufton 1, Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver 1, Susan Alcock 11 :
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University (JIAAW) United States

As we reach over 20 years since the Internet truly arrived to a wider public, it is no longer a mere tool for the dissemination of information. Online applications are now also easily used for the active engagement of massive audiences. Although archaeologists have long relied on the web for the spread of archaeological data, have we been as successful in creating a sphere of online interaction for the general public? To achieve the democratic potential available online, archaeologists need to not only present information to a passive audience but also to encourage the direct involvement of this audience with archaeological materials.

As online technologies continue to develop, some new phenomena have emerged aimed particularly at fostering this type of direct involvement. For example, Massive Open Online Courses – or MOOCs – have the potential to drastically alter the way in which previously ‘academic’ information is conveyed. What ethical questions does the spread of ‘MOOC fever’ raise about the impact of opening up the academy to an unpaying audience? Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding initiatives similarly look to existing public interest to support archaeological projects. Yet how can we maintain professional standards or legitimacy when archaeological work is undertaken by the general public? Interactive museums open collections to a global community, but how can we structure the archaeological narrative to such a varied audience? With the positive trend toward greater and greater engagement, we must also take time to ask the hard questions about the potential impact of our choices to embrace these new online tools.

This session invites contributions from projects using digital media specifically to actively engage larger groups. Of particular interest are discussions of successful – and also unsuccessful – techniques for harnessing global communities or untapped potential. This may include examples of online teaching, crowdsourcing initiatives, interactive museums, or other approaches. We ultimately hope to open a timely dialogue on the potentials and pitfalls of these new online tools for a truly interactive online archaeology.

More information on how to submit proposals can be found at http://caa2014.sciencesconf.org/