Memory, Identity and the Archival Paradigm

Conference announcement: Call for Papers

Memory, Identity and the Archival Paradigm: an interdisciplinary approach
9-10 December 2010
Dundee, Scotland

The Centre for Archive and Information Studies (CAIS) at the University of Dundee invites proposals for a conference being held on 9-10 December 2010 in Dundee, Scotland. The conference is supported by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Arts and Humanities research award and is the second conference within the Investigating the Archive project. The first conference, the Philosophy of the Archive, was held in Edinburgh in March 2009. Selected papers from that conference are available in a special issue of Archival Science, Vol 9, no 3, 2009.

The Theme for the conference is Memory, Identity and the Archival Paradigm: an interdisciplinary approach. All sub-themes should relate directly to the main theme of memory and identity. The sub-themes are:

• Philosophies of memory, forgetting and time; remembrance and responsibility; representation and the un-representable
• The philosophy and politics of identifying, selecting, assigning value to, interpreting and preserving archives
• ‘The museum concept’; collection, display and interpretation
• Capturing, recording and creating individual and collective memory
• Potential conflicts between the use of archives for culture or accountability
• The role of the curator / archivist in the formation of memory / identity
• New technologies: are memory and identity different in the digital world?
• The interplay of oral and recorded traditions
• The archive and art: inspiration, interpretation and re-creation

All submissions must contain:

a) Title of submission
b) Conference sub-theme
c) Name of speaker(s)
d) Affiliation of speaker(s)
e) Address(es) of speakers(s)
f) E-mail address(es) of speaker(s)
g) Abstract (250-350 words)
h) Short biography containing employment, research interests, publications
i) Audio-visual equipment required?

• All abstracts should be submitted in English, checked for correct grammar and spelling and e-mailed in Microsoft Word format.

• All submissions will be reviewed by the Conference Committee and those successful will be notified within two weeks after the deadline for submission.

• Selected presentations may be published following the conference.

Proposals for individual 20-30 minute presentations or panel sessions of up to three speakers will be considered. Abstracts of c.250-350 words, together with a short biography, should be submitted by Friday 23 April to:

Patricia Whatley, Director, Centre for Archive and Information Studies
p.e.whatley@dundee.ac.uk

Keynote speakers to date include:

David Lowenthal, Professor Emeritus, University College London
Author of a large number of articles and books examining perceptions of the past, including The Past is a Foreign Country, and the relationship between history and cultural heritage.

Graham Domini, Chief Director, National Archives of South Africa
Involved in the anti-apartheid student movement NUSAS and remained an active opponent of apartheid until the advent of democracy in 1994. In the early 1990s convened the African National Congress’s first investigation into archives. Has published widely on access to information; archival science, history, heritage policy and information science and has been a newspaper columnist.

Accepted speakers will be entitled to a 50% reduction of the conference registration fee.