Author: Cheryl

CFP: A Critical Study of Training in the Field of Heritage

A Critical Study of Training in the Field of Heritage
Deadline for submission of proposed contributions: September 15, 2025

Plan

Special issue editors (scientific coordination):
Call for proposals
General framework and issues considered
Axis 1 – In Situ: training in the right place at the right time
Axis 2 – Into the heart of heritage training
Axis 3 – Trials as revelations, self-celebratory narratives examined
Contribution proposals (abstracts)

Special issue editors (scientific coordination):

Christian Hottin : conservateur en chef du patrimoine, direction générale des Patrimoines et de l’Architecture, membre du CTHS, membre associé d’Héritages (UMR 9022)

Gaspard Salatko : enseignant statutaire en sciences sociales à l’École supérieure d’art d’Avignon, membre du projet ANR « Sacralités par destination. Mises en récits et mises en scène des matérialités de Notre-Dame de Paris – SACRADE »

Michelle L. Stefano : Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress; adjunct professor, Cultural Heritage Management Master’s Program, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC

Call for proposals

This call for contributions invites attention to institutions and programs which, through training, contribute to the development of authorized discourses on heritage. Authorized discourses and views on heritage are expressed in a variety of ways. They are enshrined in international and national legislation and policy, and are promoted and staged by museums and institutions for the conservation of sites and monuments, among others. They are also at the heart of knowledge transmission processes that organize the permanence or variation of the right ways of saying, seeing, or doing heritage. A critical analysis of these mechanisms must therefore include a study of the institutions of higher education that help train future professionals in the field: What grammars of heritage are taught? How, and by whom, are the modalities of its treatment defined, and according to what horizons of expectations, as well as for what purposes and audiences?

In the last decades of the 20th century, as heritage became a category of public action defined in significant part by international standards, and as an economic resource in line with the growth of mass tourism, training in heritage professions – either at the university level or in specialized schools that had long been exclusive and/or elitist – became increasingly widespread. At the time they were founded, these courses were strongly rooted in the ways in which higher education was organized via different national traditions. Like all university programs, they have recently undergone a process of codification, standardization, and normalization that, while making them more easily comparable, also encourages their promoters to diversify and certify them: the challenge now, in a global context of increased competition between universities, is to make their programs more attractive.

For teachers and students alike, these training courses are places where discourses on heritage are demarcated, structured, and standardized, although sometimes tinged with different national traditions and influences. Students are familiarized with the economic and professional environment of their chosen field. And, with the support provided by professionals from heritage establishments, as teachers or internship tutors, they also lay the foundations for their own network of professional contacts.

Furthermore, although varying from country to country, these training courses are linked to research institutions of all disciplinary horizons that have contributed, over the same period, to establishing heritage as an object of academic study. As a result, a social sciences perspective on heritage training requires us to abandon – at least for a moment – the presumed universalist aims of authorized heritage discourses and outlook, and to approach these processes from a casuistic angle, attentive to the local contexts that organize the transmission of professional discourse, gestures, and outlooks.

General framework and issues considered

The issue brings needed attention to the critical study of wide-ranging programs in institutions of higher education dedicated to training future scholars and professionals in the cultural heritage discipline and sector. Contributions can shed critical light on the following perspectives, among others, in relation to the initial establishment, development, and/or continued facilitation (and modification) of heritage training programs over time:

  • Political contexts and influences, whether at international, national, or more local levels;
  • Historical contexts and influences;
  • Disciplinary contexts and influences, including foundational theories and/or scholarship used;
  • Geographical, including increasingly global, contexts and influences;
  • Components of programs, such as curricula, methodologies, skills taught, and expected learning outcomes;
  • The balance between theory and practice, and the practical or ‘applied’ emphasis of instruction and student placement in the sector;
  • Current challenges and related effects, including economic pressures; and
  • Commemorative discourses and activities pertaining to certain longstanding institutions and programs.

The following outlines thematic axes within which contributions can fall.

Axis 1 – In Situ: training in the right place at the right time
In particular, the issue seeks to examine the circumstances that led to the creation of training courses dedicated to heritage professions and scholarship, with all possible variations in scale and influence. As such, we welcome contributions that explore the development of such training and heritage programs from a political perspective, such as with the emergence of the earliest formations in a global framework that saw the affirmation of nation-states in fierce competition with one another, both in Europe and in their colonial expansion territories.

Moreover, examinations can focus on the scientific context, such as in relation to disciplinary influences, including prominent theorization or discourse, at the time of program establishment, including art history, archaeology, ethnology, and museology, as examples. Similarly, examinations may explore disciplinary influences in how programs may have developed (or changed) over time, such as with respect to related advancements in law or economics, as well as in the hard sciences. In addition, contributions may also shed light on the gradual affirmation of allied disciplines that were intended to be both techniques for treating (e.g. conserving and preserving) certain categories of cultural property and fields of research and work in their own right, such as museum studies, archival theory and practice, library science, and later ‘heritage studies’ or ‘heritage sciences’ (defined less by their own methodology than by their object). Indeed, particular attention may be paid to the role that the teaching of museology has played – in France and elsewhere – in preceding and, in a way, paving the way for heritage studies over the past several decades.

Finally, the geopolitical context and associated influences may also be the focus of examinations. For instance, needed are analyses of the strategies for establishing programs on a global scale and with a global scope, where in the past certain institutions were established during periods of colonial/imperial domination, and more recently, they may be subject to market competition between universities, including via the growth of online (virtual) degree-granting or certification programs. Relatedly, examinations may concentrate on the impact of international heritage policies, such as promoted by UNESCO, on the organization and content of teaching.

From this angle, raised are also debates on the search for the most appropriate positioning for these programs and courses: are universities most suitable, or should they be as close as possible to curatorial and other heritage conservation, preservation, and dissemination institutions (e.g. operating from within them)? On a similar note, important questions are also raised on the circulation of knowledge, of those who transmit it and those who receive it, among and between training programs and other heritage institutions, organizations, and centers of activity.

Axis 2 – Into the heart of heritage training
Of equal importance are analyses that delve into the heart of heritage training schemes to examine their operation and various components. Aspects of heritage programs include:

the methods used to select students, such as in terms of the skill level required, the learning outcomes expected, and the ways in which they are assessed;

their curricula, such as the disciplines drawn on and taught and the exercises considered for their canonical value (e.g. engagement with certain scholarship, condition reports);

the balance between theory and practice, with particular attention paid to the question of internships, and the place given to scientific research in the course of training; and

the conditions under which students enter the job market, and any follow-up carried out by the institution about their career development and working life.

Indeed, among the most characteristic features of many of courses are their ‘practical’ or ‘applied’ approaches to studying and working within the heritage sector in various capacities, as well as the desire of those in charge to pass on managerial skills to students. Here, questions are raised on how, and to what extent, do managerial discourses and practices influence the way in which these courses, historically rooted in the humanities, are designed and delivered?

Moreover, particular attention can be paid to the material conditions for acquiring and transmitting heritage knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills, such as the location of teaching facilities, layout of workshops, laboratories, documentation centers, development of distance learning opportunities. Furthermore, the examination of small ‘workshops’ – e.g. field schools and other intensive, short courses – involved in the production of heritage discourse should extend to their integration in political, administrative, and academic networks, as well as at national and international levels.

Axis 3 – Trials as revelations, self-celebratory narratives examined
Times of great economic, political, and social challenge, as we are in now, can also provide valuable opportunities to analyze the identity of an institution or social group. In the case of heritage training, programs, and courses, we are thinking in particular of: jurisdictional conflicts between professions operating in the same sector, but linked to different training courses; administrative reforms that have the direct or indirect effect of devaluing certain diplomas in relation to others; recruitment or job market crises, of which the reasons can be multiple; or even relocation of programs, which are often the result of material constraints that have become weakening factors, but that always constitute moments of great institutional stress.

In particular, we welcome examinations on issues and developments in the wake of the 2020 pandemic, as well as the development of online heritage programs over recent decades. What impact are these having on the heritage training market? Such studies reveal the evolution of training programs in a higher education sector that is increasingly subject to competitive pressures: upward or downward trajectories; crises overcome at the cost of mergers; and conquest of new markets, among others.

As for the oldest and most recognized heritage training programs, including those that have spanned centuries, they too are entering the age of commemoration. It is in this occasion that the historical narratives of celebration are produced, often with rigor but not always with distance. Just as in times of hardship, these moments of self-celebration – from which, as a matter of principle, all forms of tension must be absent, so as to not spoil the party – should be questioned: what narratives of origin are being put forth and taking center stage? Which figures are particularly celebrated, and who is forgotten? How and where do we celebrate, and where are the blind spots and skeletons in the closet?

—

By exploring these different axes, this issue of In situ au regard des sciences sociales will examine how each heritage training program responds to the question, “What does it mean to be a school?”, with original answers, drawing on founding narratives, continuities and also points of rupture in relation to the universalist aims of what ‘heritage’ is or what should be passed on. In this respect, it’s important to emphasize that a call for papers on the history of sociology of heritage training will, almost necessarily for many potential respondents, include a dimension of self-analysis, both reflexive and critical. Similarly, dialogue between researchers and heritage professionals can be a fruitful avenue for research, as long as the pitfall of ‘feedback’ is avoided. International openness is encouraged when responding to this call, as is a comparative approach between training courses in different countries. Cross-cutting thematic approaches are preferred; however, case studies focusing on a certain school or program, an instructor or groups of instructors, students or groups of current students are also welcome. Contributions may address both initial and continuing training, and the relationships between the two.

Contribution proposals (abstracts)
The journal of the Ministry of Culture of France, In situ au regard des sciences sociales (In Situ in the Social Sciences), is seeking contributions to the special issue, A Critical Study of Training in the Field of Heritage, to be published in early 2027.

Abstracts will be subject to a blind review by journal/issue editors and editorial board members, after which authors will be invited to submit the full contribution by March 1, 2026.

500-word abstract deadline: September 15, 2025

If you would like to contribute to this issue, please send an abstract of no more than 500 words, along with a short CV, by September 15, 2025.

By email: insitu.arss@culture.gouv.fr

By mail:

Ministère de la Culture

Direction générale des Patrimoines et de l’Architecture,

Revue In Situ. Au regard des sciences sociales

à l’attention de Nathalie Meyer

182, rue Saint-Honoré

75001 Paris – FRANCE

The texts of the articles corresponding to the selected proposals are expected by March 1, 2026. Texts may be written in French or in a native language. The proposed articles must contain a new contribution of research, hypothesis, or updates; they cannot reproduce the entirety of a text already published.

It will be published in its original version and in its French translation. The length of the articles will be between 3000-7000 words, including notes and bibliography (references cited).

Guidelines for authors regarding the number of pages, illustrations, the inclusion of notes and links, etc., are available on the journal’s website:

https://journals.openedition.org/insituarss/310

CFP: Colonial Objects: Material Culture of Italian Colonialism

Colonial Objects: Material Culture of Italian Colonialism

Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome
December 4-5, 2025
Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York
March 26, 2026

Abstract deadline: September 5, 2025

Italian museums and private homes hold a substantial number of objects intertwined with the history of colonialism. Their conservation raises questions about their cultural and political significance, alongside debates regarding their provenance and the practices surrounding their restitution. Furthermore, these objects still circulate widely — through auctions, marketplaces, and passed down through family inheritances. Despite this pervasive presence, the growing scholarship on Italian colonialism has not placed material culture at the center of analysis.

Indeed, although Italian colonial visual culture, exhibition history, and museum collections garner increasing scholarly attention, the objects themselves often remain on the margins of inquiry. Furthermore, no specific methodology has been developed for the study of colonial material culture, resulting in a gap in both historical and art historical research.

Bearing traces of their makers and owners, objects act upon bodily experience, affect, and emotions. Our aim is to address the production and circulation of colonial objects to understand their active role in shaping colonial imaginaries, visual culture, and imperial ideologies, and their contribution to the formation of tropes surrounding race, gender, class, and nationhood, both in Italy and abroad. Focusing on the dialectical relationship between the facture of objects and the meanings they produce, we are thus interested in exploring how colonial objects shape memories and ideas, and how their circulation during colonial rule as well as their current preservation yield insights into the negotiations of colonial legacies by colonizers and colonized subjects alike.

With the twofold goal of, on the one hand, interrogating Italian colonial objects, and, on the other, testing material culture theories through case studies that are politically charged and deeply entangled with colonial ideology, we are organizing two international conferences to be held in Rome (Bibliotheca Hertziana, 4-5 December 2025) and in New York (Italian Academy, 26 March 2026).

Rather than merely cataloguing colonial objects, then, these conferences seek to rethink the history of Italian colonialism by focusing on material culture. Therefore, we invite scholars across all disciplines to submit proposals that center on a specific artistic, artisanal, or industrial object, as a means to delve into critical issues concerning Italian colonial history: In what ways did material culture shape the fantasies and experiences of colonialism? How did various constituencies perceive and interact with colonial ideology? What representations of the colonies themselves and of colonialism as a practice emerge through material culture?

We welcome critical analyses of objects that propose unexpected, alternative, or conflicting narratives of Italian colonialism.  Possible case studies can pertain to the fields of art history, military history, economics, industry, education, fashion, design, media, consumption, and tourism, as well as everyday artifacts and utensils.  

As the starting point for this investigation, one might consider a range of questions stemming from material culture studies, including (but not limited to) the following:

●      Materiality: What are the visual, material, and formal qualities of the object and their affordances? What responses are evoked by its sensuous qualities? How does it relate to the visual culture of its time? What are its stylistic references? Does it aim to be aesthetically captivating?

●      Production: Who designed and produced these objects, and where? What materials, and techniques or technologies were used to make them? Can we retrace exchanges in imperial and trans-imperial spaces?

●      Circulation: To whom did these objects belong? How and where were they originally displayed (domestic environment, public space, etc.)? Were they part of a collection? What transnational journeys did they undertake to reach their current location?

●      Use: For what purpose were these objects intended? Has it changed over time and in different socio-political contexts, or in relation to the evolving needs and aspirations of their owners?

●      Reproduction and remediation: Were these objects one-of-a-kind or manufactured in large quantities? Did they enter the market, and if so how were they advertised? Were they remediated through different media, and how widely did these circulate in the metropolitan and colonial context?

●      Afterlife: How did the life of the object change after the official end of colonialism? Has it been restored, repurposed, or altered? How accessible has it been since then? How, if at all, is it currently displayed? Has its provenance been verified? Have there been any restitution claims or debates? If so, what impact has the restitution process had on the object and its context?

Please send a proposal of a maximum of 500 words (in Italian or English, accompanied by a short bibliography and at least one image of the object in question) and ashort bio to colonialobjects@gmail.com by September 5, 2025. Paper drafts will be pre-circulated two weeks before each conference to foster in-person debates and exchanges.

The organization will partly cover travel and accommodation expenses. For environmental reasons, speakers will be asked to attend the venue closest to them (either Rome or New York). Online participation will also be possible.

Both conferences originate from a collaboration between the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture of the Weddigen Department of the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, the Contemporary History section of the German Historical Institute in Rome, and the Italian Academy of Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, New York, with the generous support of the Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities.

Organizers:     Carmen Belmonte (Università degli Studi di Padova/Bibliotheca Hertziana- MPI)

Laura Moure Cecchini (Università degli Studi di Padova)

Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University)

Bianca Gaudenzi (Libera Università di Bolzano/Wolfson College, University of Cambridge)

Locations:        Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome

December 4-5, 2025

Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York

March 26, 2026

Contact Information

Laura Moure Cecchini

Associate Professor, Università degli Studi di Padova

laura.mourececchini@unipd.it

Contact Email

colonialobjects@gmail.com

CFP: Re:assemblages Symposium (Lagos, 4-5 Nov 25)

Re:assemblages Symposium (Lagos, 4-5 Nov 25)

Alliance Française de Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, Nov 4–05, 2025
Deadline: Aug 15, 2025

Guest Artists Space Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation

Provocation: What does it mean to think with African and Afro-diasporic art archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces?

The 20th century can be read as a formative ecotonal space—an unsettled, generative borderland where networks fractured and reformed, collaborations ignited, and tensions gave way to new modes of relation. Within this compressed terrain, distinct ecologies of African and Afro-diasporic thought and practice took shape, producing postcolonial libraries, and archives that carried with them emergent aesthetic and epistemic registers—unfinished, insurgent, and alive with possibility.

Marking the inaugural symposium of the Re:assemblages programme, this two-day gathering brings together the African Arts Libraries (AAL) Lab and Affiliates Network, archivists, curators, scholars, artists, librarians, and wider audiences to contemplate how postcolonial African and Afro-diasporic art archives and libraries act as ecotonal sites, their everyday lives, and futures.

The Re:assemblages Symposium invites inquiry into the ecologies of African and Afro-diasporic art libraries and archives energised by the radical potential of The Short Century, a temporal arc spanning 1945 to 1994 that centers Africa in postwar decolonisation, new diasporic formations, and the modernist movement of the 20th century. The symposium asks: 
– What forms of care, friction, and futurity emerge in the gaps, silences, and transitional zones of the postcolonial archive and library? 
– How might we read these spaces not as sealed enclosures, but as ecotonal formations? 
– How can we cultivate publishing ecologies within them that disrupt extractive knowledge regimes and nurture situated ways of learning?

Symposium Themes and Provocations 
The symposium is framed by the conceptual currents of Re:assemblages 2025–26—Ecotones, Annotations, The Living Archive, and The Short Century, each offering methods to inhabit postcolonial art archives and libraries, their gaps, inventories, silences, and thresholds.

Ecotones are transitional zones—spaces between distinct ecosystems, knowledge systems, and epistemologies. Deriving from the Greek tonos (tension) and eco (home), Ecotones asks: 
– What does it mean to inhabit the boundary, the in-between? 
– What knowledge is generated at points of contact, friction, and leakage? 
– How can archives, spaces shaped by colonial histories, diasporic flows, and post-independence reimaginings be read as ecotones? 
– How might ecotonal approaches help surface marginalized voices, and foster new reading ecologies, and ecotonal practices of publishing?

Annotations takes as its point of departure the marginalia, footnotes, redactions, and fragments that often surround, rather than centre, dominant historical narratives. Here, annotation is not merely a supplement, but a method. Influenced by the speculative rigour of Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation and John Keene’s poetic logic, this theme embraces annotation as a radical archival gesture: a way of writing beside, between, or against the grain. Initially conceived to activate the archives of pan-African festivals FESMAN, Zaire ’74, PANAF, FESTAC ’77, Annotations draws on various frames to ask: 
– How can annotation operate as a feminist, intertextual, and multisensory method? 
– What does it mean to annotate across silences, across generations, across space? 
– How can annotation serve as an act of resistance, a tool of memory, and a speculative strategy for working across archives—especially those that are fragile, informal, or deliberately incomplete?

The Living Archive challenges static, institutional models by emphasizing process, activation, and embodied memory. Here, the archive is not simply a place of preservation and linear histories, but a site of performance, encounter, and transformation. Artists and cultural workers draw from and contribute to archives in ways that are iterative, unstable, and alive. The Living Archive draws on artistic-led methods to ask: 
– How have artists inhabited museum collections, libraries, and archives? 
– What new languages and forms emerge when archives are accessed through gesture, voice, kinship, or editorial experimentation? 
– What gestures and practices are required to keep an archive alive?

(The Short Century: Symposium contributions under this theme will be presented by US based fellows of The Short Century Intensive, a research fellowship hosted by G.A.S. Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.)

Submission Guidelines 
We welcome proposals responding to the themes, Ecotones, The Living Archive, and Annotations, especially those that go beyond traditional academic formats. Contributions may take the form of talks and panels, performances or readings, listening sessions or screenings, workshops or roundtables, or collaborative, and intermedia presentations.

Please submit the following materials via the Application Form (https://forms.zohopublic.eu/yinkashonibarefoundation/form/CallForPapersReassemblagesSymposium202526/formperma/IxSHtFlylwPAXokwh8jGlIglobYZUCY2EVFpg9rH3yY) by 15 August 2025: 
– Abstract (300–500 words): Include a clear title. Indicate the theme you are responding to (Ecotones, The Living Archive, or Annotations). Outline the form and content of your contribution. 
– Supporting Material (3-5 items): Relevant images, video/audio samples, or links connected to 
your abstract. Please include captions and brief descriptions. 
– Biography (max. 250 words) 
– Website (and or links to professional work) 
– Curriculum Vitae – PDF, 3 pages maximum.

Selected participants will be notified in the first week of September. Selection will be made by our Advisory Committee, with preliminary shortlisting conducted by the Planning Committee.

Contact and FAQs 
For questions and inquiries, please contact: library@guestartistsspace.com.

We will offer travel and accommodation grants for five Africa-based participants. While we cannot cover travel and accommodation for other contributors, we will provide invitation letters to assist with funding and visa applications.

The symposium is scheduled to coincide with Lagos Art Week and ART X Lagos, a city-wide platform for contemporary art from Lagos and beyond, encompassing exhibition openings, art fairs, public programmes, and related cultural events.

About 
Re:assemblages is a roaming body and multi-year programme designed to foster experimentation and collaboration within African art libraries. In 2025–26, its second chapter opens with a provocation: What does it mean to think with African and Afro-diasporic art archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces? The programme forges vital connections between artists, publishers, and research institutions in Africa, while responding to the urgent need for a global forum to advance dialogue around archives that remain under-resourced, dispersed, and shaped by enduring colonial legacies that continue to determine their access, preservation, and visibility.

The programme is curated by Naima Hassan and coordinated by Samantha Russell, with contributions from Maryam Kazeem, Ann Marie Peña, and Jonn Gale, and funding from the Terra Foundation of American Art. 

For further details, view the concept note here (https://www.yinkashonibarefoundation.com/Portals/0/Reassemblages%202025-26%20Programme%20Concept.pdf). Previous outcomes of the 2024 edition can be found here (https://www.guestartistsspace.com/Reassemblages).

Organised by Guest Artists Space Foundation & Yinka Shonibare Foundation.

Advisory Committee
Dr. Beatrix Gassmann de Sousa, Natasha Ginwala, Dr. Rangoato Hlasane, Patrick Mudekereza, Serubiri Moses, and Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan.

Planning Committee
Moni Aisida, Jonn Gale, Naima Hassan, Belinda Holden, Maryam Kazeem, Siti Osman, Samantha Russell, and Ann Marie Peña.

Re:assemblages 2025–26 is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and Afreximbank under the auspices of the Afreximbank Art Program.

Contact Information

Naima Hassan

Re:assemblages Curator

Associate Curator and Archivist

G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive

Contact Email

library@guestartistsspace.com

URL: https://www.guestartistsspace.com/News/call-for-papers-reassemblages-symposium-2025

CFP: Texas Oral History Association 2025 Annual Conference

The Texas Oral History Association (TOHA), founded in 1983, promotes the use and good practices of oral history research through a variety of programs and publications, including the journal Sound Historian. Comprised of individuals representing diverse interests and disciplines, the professional organization will host its fourteenth annual conference September 5-6, 2025, on the campus of Baylor University in Waco, TX! 

Scholars, educators, students, history enthusiasts, folklorists, family historians, and more are encouraged to submit proposals for papers or sessions to be considered for the program. Topics should include clear evidence of oral history research or provide new insights on the methodology.

Both complete sessions and individual paper proposals are welcome. Individual presentations must not exceed twenty minutes, and the session format will include opening remarks by a chair, followed by two or three papers, and concluding remarks from a commentator.

Proposals should include the names, affiliations, and contact information of participants (bio), the titles of sessions and papers, and a brief description of the topics to be covered. Please submit your proposals via email by July 18, 2025.

Direct all submittals and inquiries to:

Adrienne Cain Darough, Secretary-Treasurer

adrienne_cain@baylor.edu

Contact Information

Adrienne Cain Darough

Asst Director, Baylor University Institute for Oral History

Secretary-Treasurer, Texas Oral History Association

adrienne_cain@baylor.edu

Contact Email

adrienne_cain@baylor.edu

URL

https://toha.web.baylor.edu/2025conference

Article Discussion – TPS Fest Edition

The Teaching with Primary Sources subcommittee of RAO would like to invite you to attend our next article discussion, held in conjunction with TPS Fest 2025. Join us for a discussion of the article “Teaching with Archival Materials Using a Trauma-Informed Framework” by Jennifer Follen, 2025 (click here for a free copy https://doi.org/10.29173/cais1924). We ask that you read the freely accessible article before this session and come ready to discuss this article. We will provide questions and prompts for you to think about, but we welcome any insights and discussions this may lead to. All practitioners of TPS are welcome! Register for Session R3c HERE

For more information on TPS Fest 2025, please visit tpscollective.org/events-and-opportunities/tpsfest2025

Call for Papers: Library Careers for Medievalists (A Roundtable)

The International Society of Medievalist Librarians seeks speakers with an academic background in Medieval Studies to join a *hybrid* roundtable taking place at the International Congress on Medieval Studies taking place May 14-16, 2026, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI.

Session Description: Many Medieval Studies students express an interest in library careers, but they are often unsure what qualifications are needed for positions in the cultural heritage sector. Similarly, traditional teaching faculty often don’t have enough information to advise students on becoming a librarian or searching for entry-level library jobs. Using their own career paths as a starting point, librarians and archivists will share up-to-date advice about cultural heritage work and engage in a productive discussion with attendees about how medievalists can break into this field.

We welcome contributions from established and emerging professionals in libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions. Similarly, we welcome representatives from across this diverse field, from curators to catalogers, from acquisitions staff to digital media specialists, and from reference librarians to program developers. The preponderance of time in the session will be spent responding to questions from attendees about training, qualifications, and career pathways for the cultural heritage sector.

Anyone interested must submit through the conference portal (icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7119). Please include information about your job and your Medieval Studies background in your abstract, as well as if you expect to participate in person, virtually, or are undecided. Proposals are due by Monday, September 15th.

Call for submissions: De Gruyter Brill’s Technology and Change in History book series

Call for submissions: De Gruyter Brill’s Technology and Change in History book series

Series editors: Adam Lucas and Phillip Reid

The role played by technology in transforming human societies has been a preoccupation of the modern period. Technology and Change in History is a peer-reviewed series of monographs and edited volumes which surveys the development of technology from a variety of different historical perspectives.

Since 1997, the series has published eighteen volumes, with the nineteenth due out in June 2025. The current editors seek to increase the pace of publication while maintaining the highest standard of original scholarship. 

We invite scholars at all postdoctoral career stages to submit monographs or edited volumes in the history of technology for consideration. We encourage submissions from archaeologists and material culture specialists as well as historians. We are currently exploring the feasibility of commissioning monographs and edited volumes featuring the technologies and techniques of Indigenous people, and welcome proposals that meet those criteria. 

Information and a list of previous publications may be found here. 

Proposals and manuscripts should be submitted to Helena Schöb, Acquisitions Editor, at helena.schoeb@degruyterbrill.com. 

General queries about appropriate topics may be submitted to the series editors at alucas@uow.edu.au and phillipfrankreid@gmail.com. 

Contact Information

Proposals and manuscripts should be submitted to Helena Schöb, Acquisitions Editor, at helena.schoeb@degruyterbrill.com. 

General queries about appropriate topics may be submitted to the series editors at alucas@uow.edu.au and phillipfrankreid@gmail.com. 

Contact Email

helena.schoeb@degruyterbrill.com

URL: https://brill.com/display/serial/TCH

CFP: Lessing’s Materials/Materialities, Philadelphia

Lessing’s Materials/Materialities

Lessing Society Sponsored Panel 

ASECS Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, April 9-11, 2026 

In May 1770, Lessing assumed the office of librarian at the ducal library at Wolfenbüttel, known today as the Herzog August Bibliothek, a position he held until his death in 1781. As librarian, he was responsible for reorganizing the library’s holdings, which consisted of over 100,000 volumes, and for expanding the library’s collection on a very limited budget, which he accomplished by selling off or exchanging duplicates (Doublettentausch). Although born of necessity, this concern with the materiality and exchange value of the book mirrors the frequency with which material goods and objects are foregrounded in Lessing’s oeuvre, including rings (Minna von Barnhelm, Nathan der Weise), letters (Miß Sara Sampson), textiles (Nathan der Weise), and paintings and sculptures (Emilia Galotti, Laokoön). Today, our understanding of Lessing’s biography and his cultural significance continues to be shaped by the materiality of objects displayed in archives and collections in Wolfenbüttel, Kamenz, and beyond. In both Lessing’s oeuvre and in the collections and archives that frame his legacy, the (in)authenticity of an object’s provenance is central to its interpretation – most notably in the Ring Parable, in which the symbolic overdetermination of the three rings is linked to their exchangeability. 

This panel draws attention to the role of material objects and materiality in Lessing’s life, works and reception. Inquiries could address topics such as:

  • Representations of material objects, collections, and collectors in Lessing’s works (e.g., the rings in Nathan der Weise, the Laokoön sculpture, the painting of Emilia Galotti)
  • Library and museum collections connected with Lessing, such as the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Lessinghaus Wolfenbüttel, and the Lessing-Museum Kamenz
  • The materiality of books, periodicals, and correspondence (e.g., paper, marginalia, writing utensils, ephemera)
  • Inventories and the (re)classifying of objects, e.g., Lessing’s reorganization of the library in Wolfenbüttel 
  • Dupes, frauds, and fakes; exchanges and exchangeability (e.g., the Doublettentausch, the three rings in the Ring Parable) 
  • Lessing’s involvement with theater and its material objects (props, costumes, actors’ debts)
  • Money, gambling, and lottery tickets 
  • Correspondences and collections of letters 
  • Materiality and the spirit/matter distinction in Lessing’s theological writings 

Please send a 250-word abstract and a short CV to Mary Helen Dupree (mhd33@georgetown.edu) and Francien Markx (fmarkx@gmu.edu) by September 15, 2025. 

Redaktion: Constanze Baum – Lukas Büsse – Mark-Georg Dehrmann – Nils Gelker – Markus Malo – Alexander Nebrig – Johannes Schmidt

Diese Ankündigung wurde von H-GERMANISTIK [Lukas Büsse] betreut – editorial-germanistik@mail.h-net.msu.edu

Contact Information

Mary Helen Dupree, mhd33@georgetown.edu

Francien Markx, fmarkx@gmu.edu

Contact Email

mhd33@georgetown.edu

CFP: Library Trends Special Issue, “Cultural Heritage in Crisis”

CFP – Special issue, “Cultural Heritage in Crisis” to be published in Library Trends, 75(1), 2026.

In a recent issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Aronson et al write: “Cultural heritage represents the physical manifestation of the culture and history of a social group and forms a major component of its identity.”1 A people’s culture, history, and social identity can be destroyed, censored, suppressed, purged, or rewritten through attacks on their cultural heritage as well as the institutions and systems that support and preserve the creation of knowledge, free speech, and artistic expression. Within the last three years alone, we have witnessed attempts by individuals, governments, and extremist groups to destroy a people’s culture and identity – whether through deliberate action or ignorance – with the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, war in Gaza in October 2023, and in 2025 the intentional removal and revision of content about the history of women, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, and people of color from government pages in the United States.

For this special issue of Library Trends, we interpret cultural heritage broadly, it may include physical tangible artifacts, such as books, manuscripts, art, sculpture, monuments, or buildings, as well as intangible artifacts, such as language, knowledge, folklore, and traditions. We also include digital cultural heritage, which may include websites, data, digital images, 3D models or visualizations, multimedia, etc. Proposals for this issue should focus on how cultural heritage professionals working in organizations with a mission to preserve and make cultural heritage accessible have engaged in activities such as digital activism, culturally responsive curation, preservation of physical or digital cultural heritage, or community-centered archives and collections within the context of cultural heritage in crisis. We are also interested in approaches, case studies, or theoretical approaches on how cultural heritage is created, preserved, or reconstructed before, during, or after crises within the library and archives profession.

Potential topics may include:

  • Activism and community engagement
  • Supporting open culture
  • Culturally responsive curation/metadata practices
  • Centering community and care in preservation of cultural heritage
  • Anti-colonial practices in approaches to digital curation, metadata, archives, etc.
  • Digital approaches to preserving or reconstructing cultural heritage (e.g. 3D modeling, machine learning, AI, linked data, etc.)
  • Developing institutional collaboration and partnership with damaged libraries and archives
  • Digital repatriation of cultural heritage
  • Crisis documentation and rapid response archiving
  • Countering disinformation

Prospective authors are invited to submit an abstract outlining their proposed article by July 25, 2025. Decisions about the abstracts will be communicated by August 1, 2025. Final articles should be 7,500-9,500 words (including bibliographic references). The issues will use an open peer review process in which article authors review two manuscripts by other contributors. As part of submitting an article proposal, authors will be asked to commit to participation in this process as both an author and a reviewer.

Inquiries about the planned issues and ideas for articles should be directed to Anna Kijas (Tufts University) and Andreas Segerberg (University of Gothenburg), Guest Co-Editors of Library Trends (anna.kijas at tufts.edu / andreas.segerberg at gu.se). Proposals for articles should be submitted via an online proposal form. 

Full CfP with details is available at https://annakijas.com/news/cfp_2026-librarytrends/. 

Contact Information

Guest Co-Editors of Library Trends 

Anna Kijas (Tufts University), anna.kijas@tufts.edu

Andreas Segerberg (University of Gothenburg), andreas.segerberg@gu.se

Contact Email

anna.kijas@tufts.edu

URL

https://annakijas.com/news/cfp_2026-librarytrends/

CFP: Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800

Prayer was central to religious life in the late medieval and early modern period. Despite growing scholarly interest in religious texts, devotional practices, and spirituality, prayer and prayer books remain comparatively understudied. Prayer could take on a multitude of forms and occur in a range of spaces, from public to secluded and private; from monastic, liturgical prayer to short, indulgenced invocations and meditative prayers that evoked a rich scala of emotions and mental images.  

To pray, devotees – whether clerical or lay – often took a book to hand. Prayer books played a vital role during many moments in a person’s life in the performance of prayer and prayer-related practices. While the act of prayer is inherently transient, the books held or touched by late medieval and early modern devotees form codified and material evidence of the practices in which they engaged. Still extant in large numbers and containing a vast variety of textual and visual materials, these books – through both content and appearance – reflect the diversity of prayer practices as well as developments in book production. Taking the book as the central artefact for the study of prayer allows for an analysis that encompasses all aspects and components of prayer books, along with the actors involved in their production and use. This, in turn, enables us to chart the ‘cultural ecosystem’ in which prayer books were produced, circulated, and used. 

This three-day international conference, hosted at Leiden University by the PRAYER project (ERC Starting Grant), with keynotes by Walter S. Melion (Emory University) and Kathryn M. Rudy (University of St Andrews), aims to bring together researchers working on books that were (intended to be) used in any form of prayer practice in the late medieval and early modern era (up to the eighteenth century). This conference aims to shed new light on prayer across late medieval and early modern Europe by exploring the broader ecosystem of prayer books. This includes a wide range of interactions between the material book, texts and images disseminated through it (and their connections to other types of objects, such as rosaries, small pipe clay figures, and single-sheet prints), the devotions inspired by these texts and images, the producers and buyers/readers of the books, and the communities they belonged to.  

We particularly welcome proposals for 20-minute papers (in English) on the following topics: 

  • The material book as instrument in prayer practice 
  • The nature of prayer books and prayer texts; prayer books as miscellanies, repositories 
  • Co-transmission of prayer texts across manuscripts and/or printed books; dynamics within cycles or series of texts 
  • The language(s) of prayer books; vernacular, Latin, and multilingual prayer 
  • Social functions of prayer; communities of prayer and the role of the book 
  • Customization and personification of prayer and prayer books 
  • Multisensory experience of prayer as elicited by prayer books and their material context, including the function of mental and pictorial images (in- and external to the book), music, space, light etc. 
  • Connections and overlaps between private forms of prayer and liturgy, and between lay and professional prayer  
  • Production (centers) of handwritten and/or printed prayer books; how do changes in production process affect prayer books in terms of content and appearance? 
  • Methodological reflections on the study of late medieval and early modern prayer books, including digital and computational approaches 

We also welcome alternative formats, such as – but not limited to – roundtable discussions. Additionally, we could potentially organize on-site presentations that incorporate manuscripts or printed books from Leiden University Libraries or other nearby collections, thereby fostering direct engagement with primary source materials. 

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and short biography (max. 100 words) to prayer@hum.leidenuniv.nl by 1 October 2025. We aim to inform our speakers by 1 November 2025. 

A selection of revised contributions, pending double peer-review, will be published in an edited volume in Brill’s series Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture (https://brill.com/display/serial/INTE). 

The conference organizers will cover all conference costs, including lunches and the conference dinner, but will unfortunately be unable to reimburse travel and accommodation costs. A limited number of bursaries will be available to support (early career) researchers without access to adequate institutional funding. If you wish to be considered for a bursary, please note this with your proposal and explain why. 

Organizing Committee:  

Anna Dlabačová 

Irene Van Eldere 

Susanne de Jong 

Lieke Smits

Contact Email

prayer@hum.leidenuniv.nl

URL

https://www.rsa.org/news/704603/Bound-for-Devotion-The-Prayer-Book-as-Object-and-Practice-13001800-1-3-July-2026.htm