We are pleased to announce the International Conference: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage: Heritage, Tourism and Traditions, 13-16 July 2015, Liverpool, UK
Call for Papers
Trans-Atlantic dialogues on cultural heritage began as early as the voyages of Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus and continue through the present day. Each side of the Atlantic offers its own geographical and historical specificities expressed and projected through material and immaterial heritage. However, in geopolitical terms and through everyday mobilities, people, objects and ideas flow backward and forward across the ocean, each shaping the heritage of the other, for better or worse, and each shaping the meanings and values that heritage conveys. Where, and in what ways are these trans-Atlantic heritages connected? Where, and in what ways are they not? What can we learn by reflecting on how the different societies and cultures on each side of the Atlantic Ocean produce, consume, mediate, filter, absorb, resist, and experience the heritage of the other?
This conference is brought to you by the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (IIICH), University of Birmingham and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP), University of Illinois and offers a venue for exploring three critical interactions in this trans-Atlantic dialogue: heritage, tourism and traditions. North America and Europe fashioned two dominant cultural tropes from their powerful and influential intellectual traditions, which have been enacted in Central/South America and Africa, everywhere implicating indigenous cultures. These tropes are contested and linked through historical engagement and contemporary everyday connections. We ask: How do heritages travel? How is trans-Atlantic tourism shaped by heritage? To what extent have traditions crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic? How have heritage and tourism economies emerged based upon flows of peoples and popular imaginaries?
The goal of the conference is to be simultaneously open-ended and provocative. We welcome papers from academics across a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, business, communication, ethnology, heritage studies, history, geography, landscape architecture, literary studies, media studies, museum studies, popular culture,  postcolonial studies, sociology, tourism, urban studies, etc. Topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The heritage of trans-Atlantic encounters
• Travelling intangible heritages
• Heritage flows of popular culture
• Re-defining heritage beyond the postcolonial
• The heritage of Atlantic crossings
• World Heritage of the Atlantic periphery
• Rooting and routing heritage
• Community and Nation on display
• Visualising the Trans-Atlantic world

Abstracts of 300 words with full contact details should be sent as soon as possible but no later than 15th December 2014 to ironbridge@contacts.bham.ac.uk
https://transatlanticdialogues.wordpress.com/

THE FUTURE OF THE PAST: FROM AMPHIPOLIS TO MOSUL
NEW APPROACHES TO CULTURAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

An interdisciplinary graduate and postgraduate conference on cultural heritage issues, presented by the University of Pennsylvania (Center for Ancient Studies), Bryn Mawr College (Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Graduate Group in Archaeology, Classics, and Art History), and Temple University (Tyler School of Art, Department of Art History), and with additional support from the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (University of Pennsylvania).
April 10-11th 2015
University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
CALL FOR PAPERS
The objective of this meeting is to bring together graduate students and emerging scholars from various academic disciplines to present new avenues in the field of cultural heritage. Many young scholars today have an interdisciplinary background in liberal arts studies that allows them to apply novel, innovative ways in the protection and preservation of our shared cultural property. For this conference we would like to focus on case studies from the eastern Mediterranean, including the Middle East and northern Africa. These regions are of particular interest because they have been recently affected by devastating wars, political turmoil, and economic hardship. We would like to address various issues of cultural heritage including the protection, preservation, and management of archaeological sites and cultural landscapes, the introduction of new technologies for the conservation and studying of cultural artifacts, and the use of digital media in educating and sharing our cultural treasures with a broader audience. We believe that participation in this conference will promote intellectual discourse among new scholars and inspire them to continue to seek collaborations across disciplines by employing a variety of new practices in the protection of our cultural heritage.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dr. Morag M. Kersel, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, DePaul University
PAPER SUBMISSIONS
Potential topics for paper submissions might include but are not limited to:

• Methods in cultural heritage management and conservation: e.g. laser scanning, 3D modeling, remote sensing, data analysis and archaeological computing, risk assessment, vulnerability mapping
• Theoretical issues: e.g. adapting policies to realities on the ground, preservation of heritage, cost-benefit analyses, cultural heritage in a warzone
• Political and ethical issues: e.g. working within local legal framework, navigating local politics, use of heritage in political narratives
• Outreach: e.g. local educational programs, raising awareness of value of archaeological heritage, dealing with contemporary role of ancient heritage within social fabric

CONFERENCE FORMAT
The conference organizers encourage young researchers (recent PhDs, post-docs, and PhD candidates at an advanced stage of their dissertation) in the fields of archaeology, art history, anthropology, history, classics, digital humanities, and cultural heritage studies, to present and discuss their work with their peers and senior scholars. Each oral presentation will be given a 30 minute time slot: 20 minutes for presenting the paper and 10 minutes for discussion. Conference language is English.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
We plan to publish the conference proceedings in digital format by December 2015. Participants who would like their work to be included in the conference proceedings will be expected to submit their final manuscript by May 31st 2015.
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to mbeeler@brynmawr.edu by December 21st 2014. Applicants will be informed about their submission status by January 25th 2015. For further information or questions regarding the conference, please contact us at the same address or visit the conference website: http://futureofthepast.wix.com/culturalheritage
FEES AND FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE
Participation in the conference is free. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered by the organizers.
ORGANIZERS
Konstantinos Chalikias, PhD, postdoctoral researcher, University of Athens
Maggie Beeler, PhD candidate, Bryn Mawr College
Ariel Pearce, PhD candidate, Temple University
Steve Renette, PhD candidate, University of Pennsylvania

ADAPTATION, TRANSFORMATION, AND CONTINUITY:
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF TRANSITIONS

5th Annual UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Graduate Research Conference

January 30-31, 2015: University of California, Los Angeles
With Keynote Address by Michael Blake (University of British Columbia)

Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Michael Blake, we are offering a $300 Travel Prize for Best Abstract (priority given to international students)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Change has been a constant throughout human history: empires have emerged, dynasties dissolved, civiliza-tions collapsed. As individuals progress from womb to tomb, they both influence and are influenced by the cultural systems and structures around them. Although archaeology has assessed such transitions over long periods of time, the intersecting effects of change and its feedback across a range of spatial and temporal scales have only recently begun to be appreciated in the discipline. Past and recent geopolitical events demonstrate that change should be viewed as a complex process that has effects at and is enacted among multiple scales of the human experience, from the individual and local to the global.
For this conference, we invite students from all disciplines to explore the multi-scalar effects of cultural, po-litical, and individual transitions in the past and to consider how archaeology and the material record can be used to analyze the processes, mechanisms, and effects of those transitions. How did large scale change (political, economic, environmental, or social) affect the individual at the micro-scale and, in turn, how did individuals and their choices affect higher scales of organization? Topics for presentations include, but are not limited to:

•   the relationship between rites of passage and the creation, reification, or consolidation of social mores
•   the process of introducing or adapting new technologies
•   the dynamic between the emergence or decline of a political regime and household practices

We seek to highlight methodological and theoretical approaches to the archaeology of transition and to con-sider why change occurred at a specific time, how that change was effected, and how it affected a society across different scales of life. Students from all disciplines are invited to submit, but preference will be giv-en to papers that engage with the material record or present a relevant theoretical framework.
Abstract for individual papers (250 words max.) for 20–minute presentations and a current C.V. should be sent to CIOAconference2015@gmail.com no later than November 15, 2014.
 

The UK Punic Network Graduate Workshop creates an opportunity for graduate students working on Phoenician and Punic topics at Masters and Doctoral level to meet and discuss their work with students and staff with similar interests based at other universities. This series of meetings is one of the results of the British School at Rome/Libyan Society Punic Project, and in particular the conference held in Rome in November 2008 on ‘Identifying the Punic Mediterranean’. It has taken place in the past at Glasgow University (2009, 2011) and at Oxford University (2010, 2013, 2014), and will next take place in Durham University on Wednesday March 18^th 2015, from approximately 9 am – 6 pm. The workshop is sponsored by the Oxford Centre for Phoenician and Punic Studies (http://punic.classics.ox.ac.uk) and is held in association with Collingwood College and the Centre for the Study of the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The day is primarily aimed at students and staff working in the UK, but is open to anyone who is interested, on a first-come, first-served basis.
This is a call for papers for this meeting. As has become traditional, there will be two kinds of presentations: one of about 20-25 minutes that enables people to report on research that is well underway or (practically) completed and one of about 5-10 minutes that offers an opportunity to signal work that is just beginning, or try out specific ideas. Those interested in presenting their work should send a title and an abstract of up to 250 words to either Mark Woolmer (mark.woolmer@durham.ac.uk) or Luke Evans (l.a.r.evans@durham.ac.uk) by Friday January 9^th 2015, along with an indication of whether their contribution is supposed to be one of the longer or shorter papers. Anyone else interested in attending the workshop should contact us to register by the same date, as space is limited. Please also email us with any other queries.
Unfortunately, we are unable to assist with general travel and accommodation expenses: however, accepted speakers can apply for a scholarship to cover the costs of two night’s bed and breakfast in Collingwood College. We currently have eight such bursaries which will be allocated according to evidence of need and merit of proposal. UK-based graduate students are reminded that they can apply to the Wiedemann Fund for assistance with travel expenses (http://www.thomaswiedemann.org.uk/), and all those interested in attending are reminded that accommodation in Collingwood College can be reserved by contacting Mrs Glenda Reed (glenda.reed@durham.ac.uk).

Beauty in the Beast:

Mutants, Monsters, and Monstrosities in the Ancient World

A Graduate Student Symposium at the Johns Hopkins University

Keynote Speaker: Robert Garland, Colgate University

 
Monsters, as it is often conceived, have neither beauty nor kindness. However, the Latin word monstrum merely indicates the manifestation of something extraordinary, whether it be a physical being, a psychological disposition, a supernatural apparition, or a divine portent. Mutants, on the other hand, are beings with abnormal abilities. However, the word is a derivative of the Latin verb mutare, meaning “to change.” Yet, in the ancient world, these terms were commonly used to describe monstrosities, which challenged normativity.
Myth in both literature and the visual arts can challenge our common perceptions of mutants and monsters. Beautiful Arachne was punished and transformed into a horrid spider by Athena, but her weaving was nonetheless marvelous. Polyphemus, a cannibalistic ogre, still fostered all-consuming love for beautiful Galatea.
History tells of a different monster. The tyrants and kings of questionable sanity may have been unjustly incriminated and [mis]identified as monsters, while their clemency faded from memory. Conversely, deformities and disabilities, veiling inner-beauty, oftentimes warranted inequity and discrimination. Moreover, physiognomy could indicate inner moral values or contradict them, as in the case of Socrates, whom Plato and Xenophon describe as having a satyr-like appearance, all the while bearing moral excellence.
The goal of this graduate symposium is to explore the beauty, physical or abstract, in monstrosities of the ancient world. This may include, but is not limited to, mutants, monsters, and villains in literature and artistic representations, historical evildoers, the maniacal, who may have been erroneously antagonized, and the common ugly, judged at face value.
We invite graduate students from the departments of Classics, Archaeology, History, History of Art, Near Eastern Studies, and Writing to submit their abstract of ca. 350 words or less by December 1^st, 2014 to be considered for The Johns Hopkins Classics Graduate Symposium.  Please email beautyinthebeast@jhu.edu. Accepted graduate students will receive reimbursement for part of their room & board and travel costs.
Warm regards,
Michele Asuni
Laura Hutchison
Kristina Mueller
Anna Smith
Adam Tabeling
Co-chairs of the Symposium