Call for Presenters: Annual Meeting for SMA

The Society of Mississippi Archivists (SMA) invites submissions of session proposals for the 2023 Annual Meeting, especially those based on the theme “You Are Here: Plotting New Pathways.” The theme can be broadly interpreted, and relevant topics of discussion might include (but certainly are not limited to) innovative approaches to archives, special collections, museums, and public history:

• Advocacy and outreach
• Archival education and training
• Archival management and labor
• Collaborative/community archives
• Collection processing
• Digital humanities
• Digitization• Disaster preparedness and climate change
• Exhibit design and execution
• Recruitment and retention of archival workers
• Reference and instruction
• Role of the archivist
• Social justice and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access initiatives
• Strategic planning and long-term goals

Submission Guidelines
This call is open to SMA members, non-members, and students. Please share your proposal in roughly 250 words. Proposals are not restricted to the conference theme, and all proposals related to archives will be considered. Proposals are due no later than February 15, 2023. Please submit proposals at forms.gle/MBgQw13zw6auaN3M9.

Annual Meeting Details
The SMA Board of Directors are planning for a hybrid conference where attendees and presenters can participate in the manner that they feel most comfortable. In-person presentations and meetings will take place at Mississippi State University Libraries April 20-21. Schedule and lodging information are forthcoming. All plans are subject to change.

New Issue: ESARBICA

ESARBICA Journal: Journal of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives, Vol. 41 (2022)

Golden bulb covered with a dark cloth: memories of undocumented athletes in South Africa
Joseph Matshotshwane; Mpho Ngoepe

Website as a gateway for the provision of public archives and records management guidance
a Botswana – South Africa comparison
Olefhile Mosweu

Digitisation of audio-visual archives at the National Archives of Zimbabwe
Amos Bishi

Covid-19, a catalyst or disruptor? comprehending access to records and archives under the new normal
Simbarashe Manyika, Peterson Dewah

E-records guidance tools in records sharing at Tanzania Public Service College
Chiku M Chang’a, Kardo J Mwilongo

Management of electronic records in the South African public sector
Mpubane Emanuel Matlala, Asania Reneilwe Maphoto

Factors influencing access to archives at Botswana National Archives and Records Services
Manyeke Manek, Tshepho Mosweu

Records management in an ISO certified environment: a case study of Botho University in Botswana
Koketsego Sini Pitsonyane, Nathan Mnjama

Customer satisfaction in records management at Botswana Examinations Council
Gladness Richard, Priti Jain

Archiving the voices of the once voiceless: strategies for digital preservation of oral history at the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Archives
Mbongeni Tembe (Malokotha), Zawedde Nsibirwa

Infrastructure for the implementation of artificial intelligence to support records management at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa
Mashilo Modiba, Patrick Ngulube, Ngoako Marutha

Digital records management practices in the public sector in Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe
Oscar Sigauke

Embedding digital preservation strategies in the management of institutional repositories in South Africa
Lungile Luthuli

Records management system at the eNews Channel Africa
Nduduzo Simphiwe Sithole, Isabel Schellnack-Kelly

CFP: Best Practices Exchange

Submit your proposal via this short form (https://forms.gle/vHpTmZ8yuSwXAcoZ7) by Monday March 6, 2023.

Our theme this year is The Future of Digital Preservation. What are you excited or concerned about? What are you doing now to prepare for future challenges or opportunities? What about our current professional practices should we take forward into the future and what isn’t working that should be left behind?

Proposals can be in a variety of formats and may focus on any aspect of the future, things like (but certainly not limited to) technology, funding, environmental impact and sustainability, ethics, computational archives and archives as data, or the trend towards outsourcing and working with vendors. We also encourage proposals related to any subject of interest to you, even if they are not directly related to the theme.

A strong proposal for BPE is one that is based on real-world examples and experiences, honestly and openly examines successes and failures, includes practical take-ways, and encourages active participation from attendees. We also invite you to be creative about the format of your proposal.

To connect with others about potential proposals: BPE Proposals Brainstorming Spreadsheet

Call for Expressions of Interest: The Bloomsbury Oral History Handbook

Co-editors Alistair Thomson, Alexander Freund, and Erin Jessee are inviting expressions of interest to contribute chapters to the forthcoming Bloomsbury Oral History Handbook.The Handbook is a substantial English-language volume of approximately 25 essays written by oral historians from around the world and speaking to the practice of oral history in different international contexts. The book will offer an international overview of contemporary oral history theory and practice. It is primarily intended as a scholarly work for academics, postgraduate researchers and advanced level undergraduates, while also being of interest to oral historians working outside the academy.

We are looking for chapters (7500 words) that speak to the following topics:

·Thematic interpretation of interview sets

·Explores how oral historians develop social and historical interpretations using sets of oral history interviews, in combination with other data, and the challenges and contributions of thematic interpretation

·Making oral history exhibitions and place-based installations 

·Explores issues and approaches in the range of practices and places when we make located oral histories that combine different media in multi-sensory ‘memoryscapes’ that engage users and audiences in distinctive ways

·Making audio visual histories

·Explores issues and approaches in making podcasts, website productions, radio programs and filmed documentaries

·Teaching oral history

·Explores approaches and issues in teaching and creating oral history in school, university and community settings, and the use of ‘witnesses’ and witness testimony in educational settings

We are keen to include authors from different parts of the world. We especially encourage submissions that bring creative practitioners into conversation with academic and/or community-based oral historians and related experts, as well as incorporate authors from a range of career stages. To facilitate this, Bloomsbury has agreed to pay a small honorarium to unsalaried contributors.

If interested, please send a revised title (if relevant), 250-word abstract, brief (3-4 sentence) biography for each proposed author, a list of your oral history publications, and a link to your personal or professional website to alistair.thomson@monash.edu; alexanderfreund9@gmail.com; and erin.jessee@glasgow.ac.uk by 15 February 2023.

Successful authors will be notified of their abstract’s acceptance by early March and will then be expected to submit their draft chapters for review by 1 October 2023.

Call for Papers: Design History and Digital Material Culture, A Special Issue of the Journal of Design History

Guest Editor: Anna K. Talley, Doctoral Researcher, University of Edinburgh

This Special Issue of the Journal of Design History is dedicated to promoting the study of digital material culture. The study of digital material culture is a growing topic of interest in design history, and this Special Issue will form the first foundations for its entry into the field. The issue aims to have a mix of theoretical papers on the study of digital material culture and case-studies of digital objects. The issue will define different kinds of digital artefacts, propose new methods for studying non-analogue and hybrid objects, and hopes to include papers that address museological challenges in curating and collecting digital design, histories of digital design and digital cultural heritage and existing interdisciplinary efforts that have been undertaken to study digital material culture.

Within the academic design community, there is a recognition that digital objects are different. Design theorists Johan Redström and Heather Wiltse wrote in 2018 that ‘the ways things are made and used have fundamentally changed’ because they ‘do not take only physical form’ (Redström and Wiltse, p.6). The cultural significance of these new things has also been recognised by institutions such as museums, galleries, archives and libraries. In early 2022, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council supported two studies on digital objects as part of their Towards a National Collection initiative: One, titled ‘Preserving and sharing born-digital and hybrid objects from and across the National Collection’, a collaboration between the V&A, Birkbeck University of London and the British Film Institute sought to ‘instigate a conversation and build confidence across the museum sector to support the collecting of born-digital objects, and to lay the foundations for future research in the field’ (Arrigoni et al., p.4). The second, a digital collections audit aimed to ‘understand the number, scale and attributes of digitally-accessible collections across the UK cultural heritage sector that might form part of a future national digital collection infrastructure’ (Gosling and Cooper, 2022, p.1).

Pressingly, researchers have noted that the ephemerality of digital makes it especially prone to disappearance. It is the responsibility of historians, in part, to preserve digital culture heritage through research. This SI is concerned with theoretical papers outlining methods for studying and understanding ontologies of digital material culture. It also is interested in object-focused histories of digital design and institutional critique of the place of digital design in design history and cultural heritage institutions. Potential paper topics might include:

• Histories of digital material culture/digital objects and artefacts.

• Methods for studying non-analogue and hybrid objects.

• Museological challenges in curating and collecting digital design.

• Pedagogy of digital material culture.

• Institutional critiques of the place of digital design in design history and cultural heritage institutions.

This SI is not a “how-to” guide for conducting online research of digital design. Rather, it is concerned with the ontology of digital artefacts and how this affects their study by design historians. This issue will also not address the technical conservation of digital object as such, though discussions about the ephemerality of digital objects is very welcome.

If you would like to discuss an idea for a paper, please contact the guest editor Anna Talley at anna.talley@ed.ac.uk . Please submit abstracts of c.300 words along with a working title, your name and institutional affiliation to anna.talley@ed.ac.uk . The submission deadline for abstracts is 15 May 2023.

Call for Participants: Archives, Slavery & Race-Making Summer School, King’s College London, July 3- 7, 2023

The Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS) at King’s College London is pleased to invite applications for a fully-funded, week-long summer school exploring new methodological approaches to the archives of race & slavery in the early modern world.  

Bringing together leading scholars in a variety of methodologies and disciplines, the Archives, Slavery & Race-Making Summer School aims to introduce a new generation of researchers to cutting-edge approaches to the field. This summer school comprises morning master classes with leading scholars, followed by afternoon sessions in which participants will have the opportunity to workshop chapters from their dissertation or a related article project. The topics covered will include:

Diana Paton (Edinburgh): Gender and Slavery in the Atlantic World

Stephanie Smallwood (Washington University): The Middle Passage

Farah Karim-Cooper (The Globe/KCL): Race and Contemporary Performance

Alexandre White (Johns Hopkins University): Sociological Approaches to Archives of Slavery 

Tamara Walker (Barnard): Visual and Material Culture

This workshop is open to PhD students actively researching their dissertation and ECRs, broadly defined, from any relevant discipline. This event is being organised and hosted by Medicine and the Making of Race, 1440-1720, a UKRI Future Leader’s Fellowship Project. MMoR will cover the cost of travel, (domestic or international), to London.  Participants will receive accommodation for six nights, and breakfast and lunches will be provided. We intend this workshop to be fully accessible to all; if extra assistance is required to participate, please feel free to raise this with us in advance.

Interested applicants are invited to submit a short application, including a CV and a (ca.1000 word) covering letter which includes a description of their research interests and how this workshop might benefit them. The name of one referee is required, but will only be contacted at point of shortlisting. Please note we expect participants to be in a position to submit pieces of writing c.5000 words at least a month in advance of the workshop. Participants will also be expected to carry out reading for each masterclass in advance, and attendance of all elements of the workshop are mandatory. This is an opportunity to meet and collaborate with other emerging researchers in the field from across the globe, and the week will include time for networking and for visiting relevant sites and archives in London.

Please send your application material to mmor@kcl.ac.uk by Friday March 3rd, 2023. Applicants will be selected with a view to research fit, as well as to ensuring a diversity of research interests, methodologies, and academic backgrounds. Priority will be given to those who might not otherwise have the opportunity to travel or network internationally. 

Contact Email: 

mmor@kcl.ac.uk

URL: https://www.mmor.co.uk/news/cfp-summer-school

Call for Abstracts: Archaeologies of Displacement: Heritage, Memory, Materiality

Synopsis

This call for abstracts invites interested researchers to send their abstracts of suggested chapters on the archaeologies of displacement, migration and humanitarian crises, their impact on societies, cultural identity, and collective memory of displaced people around the world.

Book Topic

Displacement and forced migrations were a major feature of the 20th century in many regions of the world and are increasing rather than decreasing in the second decade of the 21st century. Civil wars, conflicts and political unrest have all created movements of refugees and internally displaced people. Other people have fled their homes due to famine, environmental disasters, nuclear or chemical disasters, or major development projects, such as dam building.

Currently, the seemingly endless cycle of violence and conflicts in several areas across the world, such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Central and South America, and Africa has served to create humanitarian catastrophes. In the context of the Middle East, more than 10 million people have left their homes and have been internally displaced or sought refuge in neighbouring countries. Others have made their way through the Mediterranean to reach Northern Europe, stirring up political tensions and debates about the rights of migrants and refugees. Similarly, in the past few months, images and videos highlighted a new wave of migration due to the warfare hostilities in Ukraine. Western media started immediately to report on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and how those refugees are “civilized”, “educated”, “know how to use Instagram”, and “very different from the Middle Easterners or Africans” who sought refuge during the last decade. A growing number of activists on social media platforms ironically responded to the Western media double standards and narratives of refuge.

The concept of involuntary displacement offers a powerful tool with which to explore the identities of exiled groups. A close consideration of the mechanisms of forced migration allows us to understand how the decay and loss of material objects such as personal possessions and photographs, which are invested with individual memories, compromise the ability to recall or come to terms with a difficult past life. 

Many displaced refugees and migrants seek to safeguard their cultural identities by attempting to maintain contact with their homeland. This can lead to the creation of ‘re-invented ethnicities’ where nostalgic memories of a homeland are added to and embellished in a place of sanctuary. In some cases, the assertion of alien identities can lead to ethnic tensions and hinder integration into new communities. It can also lead to distrust and the segregation or ghettoization of incoming migrants and refugees. 

This edited book aims to understand how and why the voices of displaced people are so often forgotten in the narratives of globalisation. We will focus on how the trauma of forced migration creates interconnections between material objects, memories, oral histories and people and explore the potential for creating sustainable archaeologies of displacement. Finally, we will examine how the authentic voices and testimonies of refugees can be used to revive the forgotten and unexplored narratives of global displacement. 

We welcome cross-disciplinary proposals from individuals at different stages in their careers, including early and mid-career researchers, academics and practitioners and from a range of methodological and conceptual perspectives.

Deadline

Please send abstracts (chapter proposals) of 300-400 words to the below emails by 28 February 2023

Contact Info: 

Dr. Nour A. Munawar: nour.munawar@dohainstitute.edu.qa 

Doha Institute for Graduate Studies & Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies – Qatar

Prof. Dr. James Symonds: j.symonds2@uva.nl

University of Amsterdam (UvA) – Netherlands 

Contact Email: 

nour.munawar@dohainstitute.edu.qa

URL: https://chs-doha.org/en/News/Pages/Archaeologies-of-Displacement.aspx

Call for MAC Poster Presentations

The Midwest Archives Conference will convene for its annual meeting April 13-15, 2023, in Chicago, Illinois.

The 2023 Program Committee invites poster proposal submissions on all aspects of archival practice and research, as well as from allied and related fields. The Program Committee seeks a diverse slate of presenters representing a variety of personal and institutional backgrounds, perspectives, and voices. We seek to foster a culture of inclusion in the MAC program and encourage submissions from anyone who is interested in presenting, including students, new professionals, first-time presenters, and those from allied professions. MAC membership is not required to present. 

To submit a proposal, please fill out the Google Form (forms.gle/jkGiPrPZTUAaEU7t8). Proposals are due February 3, 2023 (deadline extended). Poster presentations will be onsite only. For complete details, visit the Call for Poster Proposals page on the MAC website.

Call for Applications: Awards for Excellence in Writing and Publishing

The Society of American Archivists is soliciting recommendations for writing and publishing awards for excellence. There are five awards up for grabs with varying prize amounts. All submissions must have been produced during 2022.

Note that you can apply or be nominated for multiple awards in a single cycle, but may only receive one. The deadline for nominations is February 28, 2023.

CFP: Empire and material culture

The Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies (ww.global19c.com) is seeking a few papers on any aspect of empire and material culture (with a slight preference for papers exploring museum collections, cultures of collecting, etc.) to be included in the program of its 2023 world congress in Singapore (19-22 June). These papers will join panels that have already been formed.  The theme of the congress is “Comparative Empire: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation, 1750-1914.” While remote participation may be possible, we would be especially interested in presenters who are able to join us in person. To learn more about the work of the Society and its congress, please visit: https://www.global19c.com/ and https://www.sgncscongress.com/

The deadline for submissions has already passed. Therefore, proposals will be considered on a first-come, first served basis.