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Re-entering: Marginalized Perspectives on the Materiality of Domestic Interiors

Type: Calls For Papers [View all]
Posted by: University of Maryland
Deadline: Thu, August 15th, 2024

 Re-entering: Marginalized Perspectives on the Materiality of Domestic Interiors

Graduate Art History Association Symposium

Date: Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 24-26

Location: College Park, MD, University of Maryland, College Park

Call for Papers Deadline: August 15, 2024

Our homes are intimate spaces where we can express ourselves and our memories through decoration, furniture arrangement, what we choose to keep, what we choose to showcase, and what we throw away. In cultivating our domestic spaces, we ultimately communicate who we are, what we believe, and how we influence and are influenced by our environments. Domestic spaces are also places of control, where we limit others’ access to the space or parts within it, where gender and familial roles, intimate relationships, and boundaries are constructed, perpetuated, and challenged. Throughout history, domestic space has been a locus to realize and study the individuals who once lived and who might have labored there. Scholars, too, have tended to study the domestic spaces and material culture of elite persons. Other individuals, beyond the head of the household and men of the house, have been pushed to the periphery despite occupying the same space and using the same objects. This symposium provides an opportunity to investigate those traditionally marginalized and underrepresented in material culture studies, art history, and archaeology. We want to showcase innovative methodologies for studying interior spaces and their materials across time and space, opening up new avenues and reorienting traditional approaches to discover how domestic space is designed for different purposes, peoples, and times.

We welcome papers from graduate students and recent PhDs and MAs in any field to submit papers that look beyond elite domestic spaces and materials or complicate their narratives. Papers might address any of the following, or related issues, but are not limited to:

● Haptics/experientiality

● Materiality and/or negotiation of wealth inequality/poverty through material culture and

domestic space

● Non-elite/quotidian objects

● Reinterpretation of historic sites/cultural heritage

● Construction of domestic space or production of domestic objects

● Labor revealed by objects (during their creation, use, repair, discard, etc.)

● (Re)contextualization of objects of oppression into domestic built environments

● Ethics of study, storage, and exhibition of material culture

● Materiality of marginalization

● Objects and dialogue (language, emotions, embodying)

For best consideration, please submit a 300-word abstract and a current CV to jtbennet@umd.edu by August 15, 2024.

Posted on Mon, June 17th, 2024
Expires on Thu, August 15th, 2024

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