Forwarded message from Louise Owen <[log in to unmask]>:

Dear CHAT List,

Please find below a Call for Papers regarding SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT: THE 
BUILDING OF THE ARCHIVE, a forthcoming graduate student conference at 
Queen Mary, University of London.

We hope that this will be of interest to fellow graduate students in 
archaeology.  One of the event's major themes is how objects and events 
are identified as relevant to the historical record, the techniques used 
to manage and present that information, and the material interaction of 
the researcher with their object of study.  We hope that the conference 
will be an occasion to share research from across the humanities, and to 
consider the interpretive questions different disciplines encounter in 
their approach to the archive.

The conference fee is £20 for the day and a half including lunch and 
refreshments.  To propose a paper or to book, please email sighting-the-
[log in to unmask]

With best wishes,
Louise


CALL FOR PAPERS

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT: THE BUILDING OF THE ARCHIVE
Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Friday 20 & Saturday 21 October 2006

A graduate student conference event for researchers in the humanities, 
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

This conference explores the document and its relationship to the archive 
in the widest possible sense.  From a performance studies perspective, 
SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT approaches documentation and archival work as 
situated processes, to consider questions about the production and 
reception of knowledge.  How might the material constitution of documents 
affect their reception?  What changes when the document is 
recontextualised, and what role does this play in the enactment of 
everyday life?  What are the theoretical and practical consequences of 
calling the stability of archives, sites of the containment and 
transmission of knowledge, into question?  What are the challenges that 
research faces if the status of documents is problematized?  Is this 
liberating (opening up a wealth of possibilites as to what might count 
as 'document' and 'archive'), intractable (fraught with incapacitating 
relativism) or something else, suggesting perhaps a different set of 
ethical questions?

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT is an occasion for mutually enriching exchange to 
take place between geographical, historical, aesthetic and pragmatic 
approaches to documentation and the archive.  Papers across the humanities 
addressing a diversity of issues that relate to the scope of this theme 
are invited.  

Topics might include (but are not restricted to): nostalgia and other 
manifestations of cultural memory; commerce and the commoditization of 
knowledge; shopping (barter, exchange, purchase, selection); the body 
as/of the archive; intermediality; the ontology of the document; how and 
where the archive is sighted, sited or cited.  The aim of the event is to 
cultivate productive opportunities for disciplinary paths to connect, in 
part to discover how discipline-specific methodologies might usefully 
apply to other fields.

SIGHTING THE DOCUMENT will incorporate panel presentations, round table 
discussion, and a range of practice-based research training workshops on 
the sensory themes of 'Touch' (the body as a site of archival 
knowledge), 'Sight' (the archive in visual cultures), 'Hearing' (the role 
of sound in cultural memory) and 'Disappearing' (archiving 
the 'ephemerality' of performance).

We are delighted to welcome Alan Read as the keynote speaker for SIGHTING 
THE DOCUMENT.  Alan Read is Professor of Theatre in the Department of 
English at King's College, University of London.  He is the author 
of 'Theatre and Everyday Life: An Ethics of Performance' (1995), and the 
editor of 'Spaced Out: Architecture, Art and the City at the Millennium' 
(1999) and 'Architecturally Speaking: Practices of Art, Architecture and 
the Everyday' (2000).

Papers should not exceed fifteen minutes. The deadline for submission of 
250-500 word abstracts is 28 September 2006. Please include your name, 
institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and phone number. Abstracts 
should be submitted via e-mail to [log in to unmask]