Category: Call for Presentations

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

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: 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

CFP: NAGARA 2025 Fall Online Forum

NAGARA is now accepting session proposals for our spirited 2025 Fall Online Forum, taking place virtually this Halloween (October 31, 2025). This Online Forum will focus on advocacy in archives, and we’re summoning presenters who are ready to conjure up powerful strategies to boost awareness, secure funding, rally champions, and banish barriers in the field of government archives, records, and information management.

Have you led a local presentation or workshop and are ready to share it with a national audience? Tackled a thorny issue and want to share your results? Have a passion for advocacy or archives and want to empower your peers? Then this is your sign from the spirits to submit!

Why Submit?

  • Present to a national audience of dedicated professionals in the archives, records, and information management space.
  • Receive a 25% discount on your registration to next year’s 2026 NAGARA Annual Conference in Philadelphia, PA.
  • Be part of American Archives Month with a timely and meaningful topic that makes a lasting impact.

Whether your topic is wickedly bold, fearlessly practical, or hauntingly inspirational, we want to hear from you! Let’s rally together to elevate the role of archives and records programs across the country. Submit a 45-60 minute proposal for our consideration by the June 30 deadline.

CFP: Inter- and Transcultural Heritage. Conflicts, Overlaps, Coexistence

November 6-7, 2025

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, as part of the FORTHEM Alliance, invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit proposals for the upcoming Cultural Heritage Lab International Conference, dedicated to exploring cultural heritage within, across, and beyond the European Union’s borders. This year’s theme investigates the dynamics of intercultural, interethnic, and social interactions—especially in regions where boundaries (geographical, political, linguistic, or symbolic) are fluid and contested.

Global migration, forced polyglossia, and renewed regional tensions that often result in military conflicts and the encroachment of far-right movements on the global polity have become telltale signs of “living in the end times,” as Slavoj Žižek would have it. This has transformed heritage into both a site of conflict and a field of negotiation, whereas the simple dichotomy imposed by structural discrepancies such as core vs. periphery, North vs. South, East vs. West, etc. cannot by any means account for the nuanced changes in how cultural heritage is perceived, curated, and lived. These new tendencies compel us to interrogate whether or not cultural heritage has always possessed an intercultural character and has always resulted from the negotiations of different perspectives and power dynamics.

In this context, our conference aims to create a space for critical reflection on the intersections, frictions, and alliances formed in the in-betweenness of cultural spaces and in the peripheries—areas which are often overlooked yet abound in cultural hybridities and shared legacies.

We welcome contributions from fields including cultural and heritage studies, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, linguistics, political science, art history, literature, digital humanities, economics, media and religious studies, drama, film, the performing arts, and memory studies. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome and encouraged.

Contributors are invited to submit their abstracts on (but not limited to) the following themes:

  • Inter- and transcultural memory and heritage in borderlands;
  • The politics of cultural preservation and erasure in multicultural societies;
  • Heritage in conflict zones and the afterlife of heritage;
  • Minority narratives and “discarded” national identities;
  • “Minor” languages and cultures and their relationship to cultural hegemony;
  • Syncretism vs. conservatism in EU peripheries;
  • East-West/ North-South divides: migration, displacement, and their link to cultural heritage;
  • “The West and the Rest”: Postcolonial and decolonial approaches to cultural heritage;
  • Combined and uneven heritagisation: urban vs. rural heritage;
  • The (digital) afterlife of cultural heritage: discard, rubbish, digital avatar, etc.;

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words, along with a short biographical note (max. 100 words), to Ovio Olaru and Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița (ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro; daniela.stanciu@ulbsibiu.ro) by 20.07.2025. For effectiveness, please include “Cultural Heritage Lab conference submission” into the title of your email.

The conference will be held in English and French and will take place exclusively on-site.

We look forward to your contributions!

Kind regards,

The organisers.

The “Inter- and transcultural Heritage: Conflicts, Overlaps, Coexistence” conference is organised within the EU-funded project “Establishing a Laboratory of Cultural Heritage in Central Romania” (ELABCHROM) (https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/elabchrom/conference-2025/)

Contact Information

Andrei Terian; andrei.terian@ulbsibiu.ro

Ovio Olaru; ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro

Daniela Stanciu-Păscărița; daniela.stanciu@ulbsibiu.ro

Contact Email

ovio.olaru@ulbsibiu.ro

URL: https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/elabchrom/conference-2025/

CFP: Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand Conference: Whose Work Is It Anyway?

Conference Dates: 18–21 November, 2025

CFP Deadline: August 1, 2025

Conference information: https://bsanz2025.wordpress.com/ 

Description:

A book is the product of multiple actors (author, agent, printer, editor, publisher), and once a book exists, its life beyond the printer depends on a whole series of additional actors (distributors, booksellers, purchasers, reviewers, prize committees, second-hand sellers, collectors, libraries).  This conference focuses on all of these processes, at different times and in different places.  Whether we regard these agents as part of a full circuit of connections or fortuitous players that may interact haphazardly, we should not conceive of the book as simply a unified container of ideas, though books often try to appear that way.  Papers that examine how any of these interactions impact on or account for the power of the book are welcome.  We especially welcome studies that examine points at which Darnton’s circuit is disrupted or rerouted in unexpected directions.  And ‘book’ encompasses all written communication: in manuscript, periodical or monograph form, physical or virtual.

The 2025 Annual Conference is now open for submissions. To participate, please submit a 250–300 word abstract along with a brief biographical blurb for the online programme. Submissions close on Friday, 1 August, with acceptance decisions by mid-August to facilitate travel plans. Presenters must be members of the BSANZ at the time of the conference. Registration fees will include a welcome reception on the evening of the 18th and morning and afternoon teas and lunch on the 19th and 20th. The Librarians’ Day on Friday the 21st will not have a separate registration fee and it will be possible to attend at least part of that day via Zoom if you are unable to join us in Dunedin.

In addition to plenary sessions, we envision 6 90-minute panels across the two days. Each panel may take the form of 3 20-minute papers with Q&A following or a roundtable format with a group of speakers each presenting very briefly to open a topic for discussion. It may also be possible to organise a panel for early-career scholars who may prefer to present shorter research talks. We are also happy to receive proposals for an entire panel. So please feel free to propose a format that works best for your topic or interests and we will see what we are able to arrange.

To submit an abstract, please send a word processor file (Word, Pages, etc) rather than a PDF, as we will be editing abstracts for a consistent style for the programme. Feel free to include an image for your topic if you wish, since the programme will be digital. We will not include pictures of speakers in the programme. Send abstracts as an email attachment to books@otago.ac.nz. (If the link [a mailto link] is blocked by your provider, just copy or type the email address the old-fashioned way.). Feel free to send any questions to that same address.

CFP: NeuroGLAM 2025

The members of Neuro-GLAM-orous Canada invite you to participate in their third annual free online conference.

August 22nd 2025 — Online

9 AM – 1 PM Pacific Standard Time
12 PM – 4 PM Eastern Standard Time
1 PM – 5 PM Atlantic Standard Time

What is Neuro-GLAM-orous Canada?
Neuro-GLAM-orous Canada emerged from the success and elevated feelings around the Ontario College and University Library Association’s 2022 Neurodiversity in the Library conference when it was seen just how badly there needs to be a place for neurodivergent gallery, library, archive, and museum workers in Canada to share their interests, experiences, research, and support.

Conceived of as part professional, self-advocacy, and support group, Neuro-GLAM-orous Canada is still in its early stages and primarily organizes on our Discord server (you can contact Ben Mitchell (bemitchell@tru.ca<mailto:bemitchell@tru.ca>) for an invite link).

Potential Topics:
The theme of this year’s conference is neurodiversity, GLAM, fascism, and its discontents. Presentations and panels may relate to, but are not limited to:

Research, professional work, and ongoing projects related to the theme.
Personal accounts of being neurodivergent in GLAM spaces in the context of eugenic and authoritarian cultures, practices, and laws.
How GLAM professions have historically resisted or facilitated fascism in different contexts or are currently resisting or facilitating it.
Surveillance and ableism in GLAM professions.

For those interested, the conference will conclude with a “Five Minute Fascinators” event where participants are invited to talk about a special interest for five minutes and why they think it is so interesting.

After the conference there will be a channel created on the Neuro-GLAM-orous Canada Discord server for ongoing discussions and follow up to discussions raised during the event and where links to recordings will be posted.

Guidelines
We invite proposals for individual presentations as well as for panel submissions. Presentations and panel discussions can be pre-recorded or delivered live.

For individual presentations, please submit an abstract of no more than around 2500 characters (approximately 400 words) a presentation title, a brief biographical statement (including pronouns if you feel comfortable doing so), contact information, and any potential trigger warnings for your presentation. You may also indicate the expected length of your presentation (10 minutes or 20 minutes max).

For complete panels, please submit a panel abstract of no more than 2500 characters (approximately 400 words) as well as a list of all participants and brief biographical statements (including pronouns if you feel comfortable doing so). Please identify (up to three panelists and one moderator) and provide participants’ contact information for the panel organizer.

At Neuro-GLAM-erous Canada we believe that the personal and professional are political, and encourage participants to think of themselves as whole beings. The sphere of vulnerability this creates will require tact and understanding. While this is a space to learn and be vulnerable, harassment, bigotry, and bad-faith actors will not be tolerated.

Proposals can be submitted to neuroglamcon@gmail.com<mailto:neuroglamcon@gmail.com>

Any questions can be directed to Ben Mitchell at bemitchell@tru.ca<mailto:bemitchell@tru.ca>

Proposal deadline: July 31st 2025

CFP – Ephemera Society of America Conference

250 years: Ephemera Shapes America

Preamble 

On July 4, 2026, the United States will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. John Dunlap, a twenty-nine-year-old Irish immigrant, spent much of the night of July 4, 1776, hastily setting type and printing final copies of the single-sheet broadside of the Declaration. One was attached with a seal and folded into the Continental Congress manuscript journal after the words: “The Declaration being again read was agreed to as follows.” The others were distributed throughout the new United States to be read aloud in each of the 13 colonies and to the continental troops. Newspapers quickly published the contents. It is self-evident that ephemera played a pivotal role in the founding of our country. This broadside not only described the reasons for the country’s founding, it was also the means by which the public learned of our separation from Britain. Finding an original “Dunlap Broadside” continues to be the holy grail for collectors of American historical documents. Of the estimated 200 originally printed, twenty-six examples are known today. Most reside in institutions, including three at the National Archives, London. But copies have been unearthed in such places as Philadelphia’s famed Leary’s Book Store in 1968, in a crate that had not been opened since 1909. One, still in private hands, was discovered about twenty-five years ago behind a picture frame purchased for $4 at a Pennsylvania flea market.

Request for Proposals:

This historic anniversary is an apt moment for examining how ephemera played a key role not only in our founding, but also during the significant political events and social movements that make up our nation’s history.  Ephemera has helped to ignite, inform, commemorate, and reflect such events as the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, the Western land rush, the Centennial celebration, women’s suffrage, the World Wars, the Second Red Scare, counterculture movements in the 60s and activist activities today. Sometimes, ephemera serves as primary evidence. Without such survivors as hand-written accounts, photos, news clippings, and maps to establish the historical record, we might not know of the existence of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and the tragic Race Massacre of 1921.

We invite submissions for talks at our 2026 conference in March on how ephemera has shaped and mirrored the major events and movements that have marked America’s growth. These presentations should be richly illustrated and supported by ephemera. Examples include: broadsides, posters, pamphlets, handbills, leaflets, newspaper articles, trade cards, billheads, letterheads, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, circulars, brochures, booklets, signs, correspondence, playbills, menus, ration books, tickets, postcards, draft cards, arm bands, and buttons. 

Ephemera 46, the Ephemera Society of America (ESA) annual conference, will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Connecticut, on March 20, 2026. 

Each presentation will be 30 minutes in length, followed by a brief Q&A.  Please submit the following:

  • Presentation title and a written abstract, focusing on the way ephemera tells the story of your chosen topic. Please describe the specific types of ephemera you will use to illustrate your topic. Each presentation needs to feature at least three different types of ephemera. Proposals should not exceed 150 words.
  • 5 to 6 representative ephemera images 
  • A one-paragraph biography, including any affiliations
  • A jpg photograph of yourself for publicity purposes
  • Mailing address, phone number and e-mail address

Following a review of all proposals, finalists may be asked to submit 10 to 15 images of the types of ephemera that will be used to illustrate their talk. Proposals must be submitted via e-mail or post by September 15, 2025, to:

Barbara Loe, Ephemera 46 Conference Chair

e-mail: bjloe@earthlink.net or

post: Ephemera Society of America, Inc., P.O. Box 95, Cazenovia, NY 13035-0095.

Decisions and notification about proposals will be made by November 30, 2025. Presenters will be requested to sign a release at the time of acceptance allowing their presentation to be filmed for use by the ESA.

If selected, a draft PowerPoint presentation must be submitted by February 28, 2026. The final presentation must be submitted by March 12, 2026. Presentations must include 25 or more ephemera images. At this time, funding is not available from ESA to support travel or presentation costs. 

ESA is eager to expand the use of ephemera in the classroom, and we encourage presentations on all subjects addressing the use of ephemera in teaching and academic research. We encourage undergraduate and graduate students to submit proposals for the Emerging Scholars Program to be held on Thursday afternoon, March 19th.  For more information, please see “Emerging Scholars” under the “Discover” tab on our website:  www.ephemerasociety.org