10th Annual International Graduate Student Workshop/CfP - Armenian Studies and Material Objects, 26-27 April 2019, USA

April 26 and 27, 2019
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Call for Papers

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday, November 30, 2018

Over the last decades, the Armenian Studies Program at U-M has fostered a critical dialog with graduate students around the globe through our annual graduate student workshops. Together with our faculty, graduate students, visiting and post-doctoral fellows we have combined our efforts to push scholarship in Armenian Studies in new directions. Our interventions in the study of Armenian history, literature, translation studies, and the visual arts can be gauged by a carefully curated set of initiatives we have undertaken that will have a long-term impact on the field. The Tenth Annual International Graduate Student Workshop is a great opportunity to bring together a wide range of disciplines that have engaged closely or obliquely with Armenian related topics and, for that matter, material objects enable such meeting points.

Inspired by the interdisciplinary possibilities and the innovative scholarly avenues that the study of materiality can open in the field of Armenian Studies, the Tenth Annual International Graduate Student Workshop will focus on the theme of material objects. The exploration of culture, society and politics through material objects will provide opportunities to reflect on the ordinary or the everyday practices and experiences of Armenian communities across space and time. In addition to the disciplines of anthropology, history, literature and political science, this workshop will engage fields such as Design and Textile Studies, Media and Film Studies, Art and Architecture, Archeology and Museum Studies, that have remained at the margins of Armenian Studies.

We seek to move beyond interpreting material objects as symbols or icons. Instead, we ask how that which is material mediates human relations and fosters or translates forms of engagement and dialogue. This interdisciplinary workshop thus aims to question and expand on the multiple meanings of materiality, by exploring the historical, social, political, economic, artistic and cultural processes that constitute and give value to material objects. Moreover, we will ask how material objects gain signification, agency and shape the human subject. How can materiality help us understand various conceptualizations of affects and emotions, religion, identity, history, memory, ethics, the media, among different Armenian communities across space and time? We hope that such broad questions about material objects will allow for novel methodological approaches and bring Armenian Studies in conversation with other fields and disciplines that have been exploring and questioning the meanings and roles of material objects in a global context.

This workshop is designed for graduate students or those having received a PhD within the last three years.

Please send an abstract (250 words) along with a CV to asp.grad.workshop@umich.edu by November 30, 2018.

Successful applicants will need to submit a paper of no more than 10 to 15 double-spaced pages by April 1, 2019, to be circulated among workshop participants.

Some funds are available to cover travel expenses. Per donor guidelines, preference will be given to those traveling from the Republic of Armenia.

This workshop, sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Armenian Studies Program and funded by the Alex Manoogian Foundation is organized by Marie-Aude Baronian (University of Amsterdam, Visiting Manoogian Scholar, U-M) and Dzovinar Derderian, PhD Candidate, Department of Middle East Studies, U-M.

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL"  below.