We would like to alert our followers and readers to the upcoming conference “The Refuge of Objects/ Objects of Refuge.” The symposium will be held in Mainz from December 14-18, 2016.
From the organizers’ description: “The theme of the symposium is the material culture of ‘Refuge.’ In view of recent political events and natural catastrophes that have displaced millions and created international humanitarian crises, this term has acquired a new sense urgency for students and teachers working in the fields related to material culture studies. Definitions dating back to the great trans-Atlantic migrations of the seventeenth-and eighteenth centuries have characterized ‘refuge’ in mostly spatio-political terms as insular settings of escape or privilege, as colonial enclaves or postnational territories, or as secular or sacred retreats. Rather than rehearse the spatial premise of these terms, however, the aim of this symposium is to reflect historically, methodologically, and theoretically on the material dimensions of ‘refuge,’ that is, on the way in which objects generate or confound refuge, or accompany or encumber refugees, in short, the materiality conditioning both the refuge and refugees.”
We would particularly like to point our followers and readers to the following Panel which is of utmost interest to book historians and print culture enthusiasts: Panel 5 on “Migratory Letters and Prints”, chaired by Babette B. Tischleder and featuring papers by Alex Ames (U Delaware), Jana Hatakova, Johanna Seibert and Frank Newton (U Mainz) and Allison M. Stagg (FU Berlin).
The program flyer can be dowloaded here.
Book History and Print Culture Network 