CFP: MINING MATERIAL CULTURE, 78th Annual Meeting, Southwestern Anthropological Association
(April 12-15, 2007, Sacramento, CA.)
Deadline for Abstracts: Feb. 15, 2007.
The Southwestern Anthropological Association invites papers, posters, organized sessions and panel discussions that engage with material culture and materiality on substantive and theoretical levels. We particularly seek submissions that mine material culture for its epistemological limits and possibilities; for its embodiment of social and economic relations—both present and past; for its long and exceptional career as a marker of cultural identity and social distinction—generational, gendered, global, national, religious, and occupational; for its critical role in corporate branding, cultural imperialism, consumptive excess; and for its singular ability to express aesthetic and techno-scientific tradition and innovation, future and past—from iPods to IKEA and Clovis points to WMDs (however intangible and elusive).
The 21st century brings new meanings and sensibilities to the very notion of materiality—encouraging us to interrogate the archive as a repository of not simply the letter, the field note, the photograph, the map—but also the corporeal remnants and reflections of the newly fleeting and ephemeral: the digital image made material through the film, print, mapping and coding technologies that organize our everyday lives, from the medical to the mundane—the ultrasound and full body scan to the instant message and hand-held GPS.
We especially invite submissions from our colleagues outside the academy, including museum professionals and cultural resource managers—private, state, federal and tribal—who can speak to the poetics and politics of NAGPRA, repatriation, collections and collectors, archives and museums, heritage preservation and archaeological tourism. Further, we seek, with this year’s theme, to encourage a dialogue about the history of mining, the Gold Rush, and the continuing impact of these activities on indigenous, settler, and new immigrant societies in Northern California, the Sierra Nevada, and beyond.
Deadline for Submissions: February 15, 2007
Conference Venue: Holiday Inn-Capitol Plaza, Sacramento, CA
For more information about SWAA, visit
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/swaa.
Exhibitors, vendors, and presenters should direct queries about the annual meeting to:
Terri Castaneda, Ph.D.
President, Southwestern Anthropological Association
Department of Anthropology
California State University Sacramento,
6000 J. Street, Sacramento, CA 95819-6106.
Phone: 916-278-6067; tac@csus.edu
