University of Heidelberg

Call for Panels: Annual Conference 2012

Mar 16, 2012

The organisers of the Annual Conference invite scholars to submit panel proposals. The theme of this year's conference is "Things that connect – pathways of materiality and practice". The conference will take place from October 10-12 in Heidelberg, and is being organised by Research Area D "Historicities & Heritage".

The thematic focus of this year’s meeting is the study of materiality and the power it exercises in cultural processes. The expanding field of material culture studies has infused a new dynamism into a range of disciplines from archaeology and epigraphy to anthropology, histories of consumption, quotidian life, technology, curatorial and museum studies, aesthetics and art history.

The conference will consist of two segments: plenary panels in the morning devoted to broader themes around the subject of the conference, while the afternoon segment will feature a number of smaller, parallel panels designed to present the best results of the wide-ranging research carried out during the past years by scholars in the congenial cross-regional and transdisciplinary setting of the Cluster. Particularly young researchers from the Cluster are being encouraged to use this platform to bring the findings of their research into a lively debate with a selected number of invited guests.

Panel proposals should include the title of the panel, an abstract of about 10-15 lines, and a list of speakers (with a tentative title or a sentence on the subject of their presentations). In view of the Cluster’s epochal and disciplinary diversity the organisers would encourage panels cutting across regions and disciplines, and comprising a mix of junior and senior scholars. Panels should ideally have no more than three speakers and a discussant. Invited guests would be a welcome presence within the panels – however it is advised to limit the number of these to one per panel. Proposals will be selected on the basis of quality and their relevance to transcultural studies.

Submissions for panels are accepted until March 31, 2012 and should be sent to annualconference@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de.

The Annual Conference of the Cluster "Asia and Europe" will take place from October 10-12, 2012, at the Karl Jaspers Centre in Heidelberg. It is organised by Prof. Monica Juneja, Prof. Birgit Kellner and Prof. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos for Research Area D "Historicities and Heritage".