The Developing Room’s 8th Annual Graduate Student Colloquium on the History and Theory of Photography

Call for Papers

Submission deadline: January 15, 2024

Event date and venue: Friday, April 26, 2024, 12:30–6:30pm
19 University Place, New York University

The Developing Room, a photography working group at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis, announces its eighth graduate colloquium in collaboration with the positions: asia critique journal and New York University.

With a special focus on Global Asias, this year’s colloquium is organized by three PhD students, from Comparative Literature and Art History at Rutgers and East Asian Studies at NYU. We invite doctoral students—at any stage and from any field of study—whose research critically engages with photography in/as/and/against the archive around the issues of Asia and its diasporas. The colloquium will open with a keynote speech, and each graduate participant will give a 20 to 25-minute presentation and engage in a faculty-led panel discussion. Selected papers will also be considered for publication in positions politics, the online platform of positions.

The optical field of photography paradoxically leaves open as much as it forecloses the possibility of interpretive reimagination and speculation. It is this opening, the utterance that draws attention to what the photograph does not show, that lies at the heart of our concerns. With its line of inquiry oriented toward the discourses on historiography, futurities, temporalities, and contingencies in relation to photography, the “(Un)archived” colloquium turns to the archival absence and silence within, on the edge of, and/or in excess of the visual documents. In so doing, we seek to break with the ideology of empiricism and positivist demands of history, instead making room for what Saidiya Hartman refers to as “critical fabulation.” We call on our participants to consider, without limiting themselves to, the following questions:

– How do absences and silences register in photography?

– How do we attend to and articulate that which is invisible, yet present, in the photograph? How might we do this by turning to the archive?

– What are the instances where photography and the archive stand at odds with one another? What can we learn from such dissonances?

– How do certain photographs activate alternative ways of engaging with the archive?

– What kind of image emerges when we move away from the optical realm of photography? In other words, how does photography engage extra-visual senses?

– What is at stake when we embrace imagination and speculation as viable methods in the face of archival absences?

– How do artists, filmmakers, writers, and other cultural practitioners respond to such absences through photography?

– How do the material and archival conditions of certain photographs speak to or unsettle our notions of the (un)photographed?

To apply:

Please submit the following materials to this web form no later than January 15, 2024:

–  An abstract of 250 words or less

– a summary of your larger project or dissertation progress, 250 words or less

– A short bio of 150 words or less

– CV

Society of Ohio Archivists Annual Meeting, May 2024

The Society of Ohio Archivists is planning a hybrid Annual Meeting on Thursday (virtual only) and Friday (hybrid), May 16-17, 2024. The in-person portion of the conference (Friday, May 17) will be held at Capital University in Bexley, Ohio.

This year, we welcome proposals that explore the theme of Archives for All: Enhancing Accessibility and Inclusivity. We encourage presentations that address any one (or more) of the definitions of accessible: 

ac·ces·si·ble (adjective) /əkˈsesəb(ə)l/

• (of a place) able to be reached or entered;
• Able to be easily obtained or used;
• able to be reached, entered, or used by people who have a disability;
• easily understood or appreciated.
• (of a person, typically one in a position of authority or importance) friendly and easy to talk to; approachable.

Proposals may provide specific workflows as well as examples of

• How we can make our physical spaces, collections, finding aids (and other descriptive tools) more accessible; or 
• How we can make ourselves as archival professionals more accessible to our constituents; or 
• How we can plan public programs and professional development opportunities with accessibility in mind.

Proposals will be evaluated on interest, creativity, relevance, diversity of content and speaker representation, and completeness of proposal. The Educational Program Committee also encourages proposals from students, new professionals, first-time presenters and attendees, individuals from related professions, as well as those from outside the state of Ohio. Deadline to submit proposals: Friday, January 26, 2024 at 5pm.

Proposals must include:

• Session title and type;
• Preference (if any) for an in-person or virtual session;
• Abstract (250 words) describing the session/poster and how it will be of interest to SOA attendees, how it relates to this year’s theme, and how presenters will engage with participants;
• Session description (150 words) for the program;
• Contact information for the primary presenter and any other participants;
• A/V or technology requirements; and
• Any additional special needs.

The Program Committee encourages proposals of panel sessions, student and professional posters, as well as alternative formats such as a debate, fish bowl, lightning, mini-workshop, pecha kucha, world café, and other session formats that encourage interaction between presenters and attendees. See the proposal form for detailed information about alternative sessions.

Please complete the proposal form by January 26, 2024. A PDF proposal form can be found here.

Further meeting details will be posted on the meeting website as they develop. Follow the conversation online at #soaam24.

Questions? Please contact Sara Mouch or Michelle Sweetser, Co-Chairs, Society of Ohio Archivists Educational Programming Committee.