CFP: Translating Ruins: Mutable Grounds, Mediated Encounters, and Mobile Precarities

We are delighted to invite scholars from all disciplines to contribute to the forthcoming edited volume with Routledge: Translating Ruins: Mutable Grounds, Mediated Encounters, and Mobile Precarities. 

In an era of climate crisis, extractivism, war, forced displacement, migration, and rapid urban change, ruins have become pervasive. Contemporary ruin scholarship has moved beyond the aesthetic of Ruinenlust (‘ruin lust’) to recognise ruins as critical thresholds that illuminate entanglements of pasts, presents, and futures (López Galviz et al., 2017). This edited volume examines how translational practices – broadly conceived as complex semiotic practices that are materially grounded and embedded in sociohistorical, ethical and creative relations – engage with historical and contemporary ruins, and how such practices shape the reconstruction, reinterpretation, remembrance and governance of contested ruin-sites, wider processes of ruination, and forms of ruin-related heritage.

We invite critical and practice-based contributions that engage with the complexities of translating ruins. We especially welcome proposals from Translation Studies, Critical Heritage Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Memory Studies, Urban Studies, Cultural Geography, Art History and Visual Culture, and related fields.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:  

  • The transformation of ruins into museums, monuments, heritage sites, and immersive multimedia formats. 
  • The redevelopment or repurposing of ruins into green spaces, public facilities, cultural infrastructures, or commercial complexes – spaces that may themselves enter new cycles of decay and renewal.  
  • Multilingual and multimodal interpreting and translation practices within ruin-related museums, heritage sites, communities, or institutional settings.  
  • Activist or community-based translation practices, or artistic interventions in sites of historical or ongoing ruination.  
  • Intermedial and multimodal representations and translations of ruins and ruin narratives across diverse platforms and formats, including social media, blogs, travel vlogs, livestreams, and digital archives.  
  • The translation and resignification of ruin-related textual fragments, archival materials, photographs, and other material remnants. 
  • The translation of narratives that foreground the material presence and historical specificity of ruins, and the lived experience of those who built, inhabited, or survived ruins. 
  • The transposition of ruin objects to new sites and interpretive contexts (e.g., travelling exhibitions, diasporic archives).   

Submission details:

Please submit a proposal of up to 300 words as a single Word document (.doc or .docx) to translatingruins@gmail.com with the subject line: “[Your Name] – Chapter Proposal”. 

The Word document should include: 

  • A provisional chapter title 
  • An abstract (maximum 300 words, excluding references) and up to five keywords 
  • A short biographical note (maximum 150 words), including your affiliation and contact details
  • A brief statement indicating whether the proposed chapter will include any line illustrations, photographs, or tables, and whether colour reproduction will be required

The deadline for abstract submission is 23 February 2026. Full chapters are due 30 September 2026.

Contact Information

Yaqi Xi (yaqi.xi@warwick.ac.uk), University of Warwick, UK.

Shaoyu Yang (shaoyu.yang@warwick.ac.uk), University of Warwick, UK.

Contact Email

translatingruins@gmail.com

Attachments

CfP_Translating Ruins

Call for Chapters: Dangerous Writings

Colleagues are invited to submit chapters for an edited collection of Dangerous Writings.

In October 2025, the Dangerous Writings symposium on the Ethics and Practicalities of Working with Risky Texts brought together scholars, archivists, practitioners, and creatives at the University of Manchester to consider the multiple forms of danger embedded in writing, curating, and reading. “Dangerous writings”, for example, include incendiary political texts or memoirs that reveal classified or confidential information, letters from prison and exile, have long served as catalysts for transformation. Yet they are also laden with numerous ethical, emotional, and sometimes legal implications for those who collect them, handle them, and/or encounter them.

This edited collection seeks to develop the conversations initiated at the symposium. At the heart of this endeavour lies a set of questions about power and responsibility. What does it mean to work with writing that unsettles or resists? How do archives, institutions, and researchers navigate the demands of care and risk? And what forms of knowledge or possibility open when we approach these materials with an ethical sensibility?

Contributors are invited to explore dangerous writings in all their complexity, whether through historical, sociological, literary, archival, or practice-based approaches. We are interested in chapters that illuminate how such texts are produced under conditions of constraint; how they challenge authority or institutional narratives; how they demonstrate forms of solidarity and resistance; and how readers, researchers, and custodians negotiate the emotional and professional labour involved in engaging with them.

Works across the social sciences that reflects these tensions are especially welcome. By thinking across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, we hope to advance understanding of what risky writing does and what responsibilities it generates for those who work with it.

Schedule

  • First full chapter drafts (approx. 8,000 words): September 2026
  • Editorial comments returned: November 2026
  • Revised final drafts due: February 2027
  • Proof-ready manuscript submitted to publisher: April 2027
  • Anticipated publication: Summer 2027

Expressions of Interest

Please signal your interest in contributing by emailing Jon Shute (with Emily Turner and Marion Vannier in cc) by Friday, 16 January 2026. At this stage, a brief provisional title and 250 word abstract will suffice.

Call for Case Studies – Artificial Intelligence Applications in Oral History

The forthcoming publication from Palgrave Macmillan, Artificial Intelligence Applications in Oral History: Reports from the Field, is launching a call for case studies from oral history practitioners across the world who have utilized artificial intelligence technologies in their work. The possible applications of this technology will be divided into the following chapters:

Chapter 1 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Interviewer

Chapter 2 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Transcriber

Chapter 3 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Indexer

Chapter 4 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Researcher

Chapter 5 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Curator

Those interested in submitting their work for potential case study inclusion will identify one of these five areas and summarize their efforts in an abstract of around 250 words, focusing on the application of said technologies, the outcomes of said application, and any lessons learned, or opinions held, in the aftermath. 

Those selected for inclusion will be notified by mid-January 2026 and will then have six months to produce their case study. These documents will range in size from 2500-5000 words depending on the scope of the work and the total number of case studies accepted. The book itself is currently scheduled to be submitted by the end of the Summer 2026 and published in Q1 2027.

The deadline for abstract submission is December 31, 2025. If you are interested in submitting a project for consideration, or if you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact author/editor Steven Sielaff at Steven_Sielaff@baylor.edu.

Contact Information

Steven Sielaff

Contact Email

Steven_Sielaff@baylor.edu

Call for Chapters: Routledge Handbook of Oral History Theory

Co-editors George Severs and Amy Tooth Murphy are inviting expressions of interest to contribute chapters to the forthcoming Routledge Oral History Theory Handbook. The Handbook will consist of between 35 and 40 chapters in English which aim to reflect on and advance the field of theory within oral history. Despite its usefulness and importance, theory remains under-examined and under-appreciated within oral history. In dialogue with each other, the chapters of the Handbook will situate and make a case for theory as a crucial and productive component of oral history work, both within and beyond the academy. Across all stages of the oral history process, from conception to analysis and dissemination, theory is vital. To that end, the editors invite a wide range of contributions which centre theoretical frameworks, approaches, developments and provocations.

Theory is a live and dynamic process. As such, contributors to this volume are not expected to make definitive or ‘final’ pronouncements. Rather we encourage submissions which propose new and emerging concepts, actively engage with ongoing theoretical developments, and impact future practice. In doing so, the editors seek to stage work by an international range of authors, including but not limited to early career and established scholars, oral history practitioners, public historians, archivists and activists. This volume will be global in scope and the editors encourage submissions from a wide range of geographic contexts. We particularly encourage submissions from authors working in the geopolitical south and/or whose work foregrounds theories and questions of decolonisation and/or indigeneity.

We are seeking chapters of 8000 words. Authors are encouraged to submit abstracts of 250-300 words to the editors via ohtheoryhandbook@gmail.com along with a short biography by January 31st 2026. Authors are reminded that theory should form the core of the proposed chapters. We appreciate that case studies may feature but these should be used to evidence or inform the theoretical interventions at the hearts of chapters. The editors will respond with their decisions on submitted abstracts by the end of February 2026 and first draft chapters will be expected by the end of December 2026.

To learn more, please see the full Call for Chapters here.

G.L.A.M. Bookworms Book Club

Everyone is welcome to join Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Archives’ next G.L.A.M. Bookworms Book Club discussion: THE MUSEUM OF ORDINARY PEOPLE by Mike Gayle, via Zoom, Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 7pm (EST). RSVP for Zoom link: info@wolfsonarchives.org.

THE MUSEUM OF ORDINARY PEOPLE
By Mike Gayle
While dealing with the loss of her mother, Jess discovers a unique museum in a warehouse dedicated to everyday items that hold significant personal meaning. As she becomes the unofficial custodian of the collection, Jess uncovers heartwarming stories and secrets that help her navigate her own grief and find a new purpose.

Thank you!

——————————
Lou Ellen Kramer
Manager
Miami Dade College – Wolfson Archives
lkramer1@mdc.edu
info@wolfsonarchives.org

CFP: Seeking Oral Historians for Bloomsbury’s Trans Studies Book Series

Oral historians are warmly invited to write books for Trans Studies, a book series published by Bloomsbury Academic. We seek books that give voice to previously unrecognized transgender and nonbinary people and issues, with a special emphasis on topics not well documented in written literature, but for which there are oral archives that allow the recovery of previously forgotten histories. We also welcome books that explore already well-recognized transgender and nonbinary topics that can be examined in greater depth through oral histories

Bloomsbury is a pioneer in innovative oral history, and its gender and sexuality list publishes leading scholarly research from around the world, with a longstanding commitment to insightful books on LGBTQIA+ topics.

Books that emphasize the broader significance and potential of oral history for transgender studies are especially invited. All books in the Trans Studies series—whether they are grounded in the humanities, social sciences, or biological sciences—reflect on the assumptions that guide the book’s specific version of trans scholarship. We seek works that provide innovative reformulations of the scope and practice of trans studies, including novel methodologies and theoretical concepts that challenge the status quo. We welcome books from disciplines that are underrepresented in trans studies.

To propose a book for Trans Studies, please complete this form and submit it to General Editor Douglas Vakoch (dvakoch@meti.org) and Senior Acquisitions Editor Courtney Morales (Courtney.Morales@bloomsbury.com). Please include your CV, a list of five to seven potential reviewers you do not know personally, and a sample chapter. If you do not have a sample chapter for the book, please include a previous writing sample written in the same style that you envision for the book.

On the form, list the highest degree for each author, editor, and chapter author. For edited volumes, all chapters should have at least one author who has already completed their PhD. 

High priorities for the series include books that provide intersectional perspectives, as well as works that examine transgender and nonbinary topics with reference to particular linguistic, national, and regional groups. We encourage authors from around the world to contribute to the series, incorporating culture-specific insights as feasible.

Books based on oral accounts of either contemporary or historical topics and individuals are equally appropriate. Books in this series include monographs and edited volumes that target academic audiences. We value books that explore socially relevant issues and that both clarify and question the premises of fields outside of trans studies.

All books follow the most recent guidelines for best practices in using accurate and respectful language when discussing transgender and nonbinary people and topics. Key resources to these best practices include GLAAD’s overviews of Transgender People and Nonbinary People, as well as this Glossary of Terms.

Contributors to this series come from disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, architecture, area studies, art, biology, cinema studies, classics, communication studies, cultural studies, disability studies, ecology, economics, education, environmental studies, ethics, ethnic studies, gender studies, geography, history, law, literary studies, masculinity studies, media studies, medicine, medieval studies, oral history, philosophy, political science, psychology, public policy, queer studies, religious studies, rhetoric, science and technology studies, science fiction studies, sociology, theology, trans studies, and women’s studies. Proposals grounded in other disciplines are equally welcome.

Bloomsbury Academic’s Trans Studies book series is based on a three-fold commitment to:

  • Provide inclusive, global representation of transgender and nonbinary topics and authors
  • Challenge assumptions of trans studies and other fields
  • Engage diverse disciplines from the humanities, social sciences, and biological sciences

Contact Email

dvakoch@meti.org

CFP: Seeking Material Culture Scholars for Bloombury’s Trans Studies Book Series

Seeking material culture scholars to write and edit books for Trans Studies, a book series published by Bloomsbury Academic. We welcome books on transgender and nonbinary lives and experiences as reflected in material culture. 

Bloomsbury Academic is a leading international publisher of books on material culture, and its Gender & Sexuality Studies list pioneers scholarship about marginalized gender identities and sexualities, as seen in the press’s commitment to LGBTQIA+ topics. 

High priorities for the Trans Studies series include books that provide intersectional perspectives, as well as works that examine transgender and nonbinary topics with reference to particular linguistic, national, and regional groups. We encourage authors from around the world to contribute to the series, incorporating culture-specific insights as feasible.

Contemporary and historical works are equally appropriate. Books in this series include monographs and edited volumes that target academic audiences. We value books that explore socially relevant issues and that both clarify and question the premises of trans studies.

To propose a book for Trans Studies, please complete this form and submit it to General Editor Douglas Vakoch (dvakoch@meti.org) and Senior Acquisitions Editor Courtney Morales (Courtney.Morales@bloomsbury.com). Please include your CV, a list of five to seven potential reviewers you do not know personally, and a sample chapter. If you do not have a sample chapter for the book, please include a previous writing sample written in the same style that you envision for the book.

On the form, list the highest degree for each author, editor, and chapter author. For edited volumes, all chapters should have at least one author who has already completed their PhD. 

All books in the Trans Studies series—whether they are grounded in the humanities, social sciences, or biological sciences—reflect on the assumptions that guide the book’s specific version of trans scholarship. We especially seek works that provide innovative reformulations of the scope and practice of trans studies, including novel methodologies and theoretical concepts that challenge the status quo. We welcome books from disciplines that are underrepresented in trans studies.

All books follow the most recent guidelines for best practices in using accurate and respectful language when discussing transgender and nonbinary people and topics. Key resources to these best practices include GLAAD’s overviews of Transgender People and Nonbinary People, as well as this Glossary of Terms.

Contributors to this series come from disciplines including but not limited to affect studies, anthropology, architecture, area studies, art, biology, cinema studies, classics, communication studies, cultural studies, disability studies, ecology, economics, education, emotion studies, environmental studies, ethics, ethnic studies, gender studies, geography, history, law, literary studies, masculinity studies, media studies, medicine, medieval studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, public policy, queer studies, religious studies, rhetoric, science and technology studies, science fiction studies, sociology, theology, trans studies, and women’s studies. Proposals grounded in other disciplines are equally welcome.

Contact Email

dvakoch@meti.org

New/Recent Publications

Articles

Vescio, Portia; Bouley Sweeten, Regina; Dull, Kathleen; McDonald, Dylan; and Pringle, Jonathan (2025) “Hybrid Conferences as the Standard Offering of Archival Organizations,” Journal of Western Archives: Vol. 16: Iss. 1, Article 5.

Brier, David. “Making the Invisible Visible: Teaching Students About the Hidden Environmental Costs of Digital Activities” College & Research Libraries News [Online], Volume 86 Number 9 (1 October 2025)

Thomas M. Susman, Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 1974 Amendments to the Freedom of Information Act and Remembering its Conception: A Personal Odyssey. 7J. CIVIC INFO.2, 1-12(2025).

Kathryn Montalbano & Benjy Hamm, The Whole County is Watching: The Use of Kentucky’s Open Records and Meetings Acts by Local Newspapers in Rural Communities. 7J. CIVIC INFO.2, 41-62(2025).

Chigwada, J., & Ngulube, P. (2023). Stakeholders in the acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of indigenous knowledge projects. Information Development, 41(4), 1281-1298. https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669231192851 (Original work published 2025)

Tella, A., Jatto, E. O., & Ajani, Y. A. (2025). Preserving indigenous knowledge: Leveraging digital technology and artificial intelligence. IFLA Journal, 51(3), 703-721. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352251342505 (Original work published 2025)

Knowlton, Steven A. “Memories of Public Libraries in Oral Histories of Accomplished Black Professionals: Methods of Finding the Library in the Life of the User.” Information & Culture 60, no. 2 (2025): 109-144. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lac.00012.

Books

Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art
Julia Rensing
[transcript], 2025

Revoicing Intangible Cultural Heritage: Perspectives from the Margins of Europe
Edited By Laura Hodsdon, Valts Ernštreits, Kadri Koreinik, Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar
Routledge, 2025

Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums: Immersion, Emotion, Narrative, and Gameplay
Ed Rodley
Routledge, 2025

Les Archives par Létat et ses Institutions: Contribution à une théorie de reconstitution des fonds d’archives mutilés, dispersés et/ou détruits // Archives by the State and its Institutions: Contribution to a theory of reconstitution of mutilated, dispersed and/or destroyed archival funds
Mehenni Akbal

Pioneering Women Archivists in Early 20th Century England
Elizabeth Shepherd
Routledge, 2025

Drawn to the Stacks: Essays on Libraries, Librarians and Archives in Comics and Graphic Novels
Carrye Kay Syma, Robert G. Weiner, Donell Callender
McFarland

Network Analysis for Book Historians: Digital Labour and Data Visualization Techniques
Liz Fischer
Arc Humanities Press

The Future of Memory: A History of Lossless Format Standards in the Moving Image Archive
Jimi Jones and Marek Jancovic
University of Illinois Press, 2025

Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941
Sarah Ellen Zarrow
Cornell University Press, 2025

The Routledge Handbook of Museum and Heritage Education
Edited By Maggie McColl, Pete Brown, Michelle Delaney, Karl Borromäus Murr, Henrik Zipsane
Routledge, 2025

Digitising Cultural Heritage: Clashes with Copyright Law
Pinar Oruç
Bloomsbury, 2025

Reports

History, the Past, and Public Culture
American Historical Association

An Overview of Emulation as a Preservation Method
Eric Kaltman, Winnie Schwaid-Lindner, Drey Jonathan, Andrew Borman, Alex Garnett, and Larry Masinter
CLIR, July 2025

CfP: Human Rights Archives and the Problems of Provenance

Human Rights Archives and the Problems of Provenance

Special Issue of The Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies

Editors: Michelle Caswell, UCLA and Jess Melvin, University of Sydney

Records documenting human rights abuse raise a host of critical challenges for archivists, scholars, activists, survivors, and source communities. Who owns such records? Which stakeholders have the legal and/or ethical authority to make decisions about their stewardship? When should community-based collections, personal records, oral histories or artistic expressions comment on, respond to, or fill in the gaps left by official state documentation?

Dominant Western archival theories trace the provenance of records to their creators. By this narrow estimation, many records documenting human rights abuse belong to the abusers who created them or successor states. However, recent developments in critical archival studies challenge dominant Western notions of provenance, expanding it (as in community or social provenance) (Bastian 2009, Douglas 2017), retooling it for liberatory aims such as crip provenance (Brilmyer 2022), land as provenance (Ghaddar 2022), or provenancial fabulation (Lapp 2023), or abandoning it altogether (Drake 2021). A recent special issue of Archival Science edited by Jeannette Bastian, Stanley Griffin, and James Lowry addresses emerging conceptions of provenance in detail.

This renewed interest in provenance has opened up critical questions as provenance relates specifically to the ownership, stewardship, and uses of records documenting human rights abuse. This special issue of The Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies will exclusively feature papers produced at the Human Rights Archives and the Problems of Provenance symposium at the University of Sydney in June 2025. The symposium was organized as part of the Indonesia Trauma Testimony Project made possible with support from the Australian Research Council.

Submission due date: September 1, 2025 (Contact jclis@litwinbooks.com to submit a paper.)

Anticipated publication date: Spring 2026

References

Bastian J (2006) Reading colonial records through an archival lens: the provenance of place, space and creation. Arch Sci 6: 267-284.

Brilmyer G (2022) Toward a crip provenance: centering disability in archives through its absence. J Contemporary Arch Stud 9:1-25

Douglas J (2017) Origins and beyond. In: MacNeil H & Eastwood T (eds.) Currents of Archival Thinking (2nd. ed) Libraries Unlimited, California. pp 25-52

Drake J (2016) RadTech Meets RadArch: Towards A New Principle for Archives and Archival Description. Medium. https://medium.com/on-archivy/radtech-meets-radarch-towards-a-new-principle-for-archives-and-archival-description-568f133e4325

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