Call for Papers
V CRISA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
American Archives: Virtuality, Memory, Media Archaeology
Rome, Italy
September 18-20, 2023
http://crisa.uniroma3.it/
Deadline for submission of abstracts: February 28, 2023
As acts inscribed and archived on some form of material medium — paper or digital — documents are traces that allow collective and individual memories to establish social and historical realities. The archives that collect such traces play a central role because, through them, processes of elaboration, reworking, and questioning of interconnected national and transnational collective memories become possible. Archives thus allow us to rethink the cultural heritage of a community, contributing to the elaboration of new historical and social models. Such processes can help strengthen democratic structures, especially when it comes to the experiences and knowledge of subaltern groups historically excluded from public debates.
The digital has decisively transformed not only the processes of producing and depositing new documentary material, but also the ways in which historical materials are preserved and enhanced. In an area such as the United States, for example, where the civilization of writing began at least five centuries ago — not counting pre-Columbian forms of writing — this raises the question of how colonial-era archives are preserved and transferred.
Digital history is an examination and representation of a past that takes advantage of new communication technologies. It produces and shares historical knowledge, drawing on the features of the field, such as databases, hypertextualization, and networks.
In the era of documentality and Big Data, in which time and geographic spaces are fragmented and then reconnected once more on the net, the shift from paper to digital archives also contributes to a changing relationship between the public and the private. The increasing centrality of the technical medium for storing and managing information has exposed us to processes of reconstruction of established truths and forms of instrumentalization of collective knowledge through the generation of post-truths in which the normative force of documents, intertwined with the pervasiveness of media, exacerbates and often instrumentalizes the political, historical, judicial, cultural, and artistic uses otherwise inherent in archives.
The Fifth CRISA conference, “American Archives: Virtuality, Memory, Media Archaeology”, offers the opportunity for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary investigation and problematization of the medial, technical, cultural, and aesthetic aspects of the digitization of knowledge. In particular, history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, architecture, geography, music, and visual arts are all disciplines that can approach the topic using different methodological tools and making interesting contributions. Indeed, the multidisciplinary approach allows for an in-depth examination of the transitional condition of archives, both in terms of their current political and cultural uses and in terms of their changing theoretical status.
Possible related topics, but not limited to, are:
- How to redeem and reclassify existing archives (particularly institutional);
- Creation and re-creation of thematic archives;
- Relationships between archives and democratic processes for the recovery of subaltern collective memories;
- Potentialities and risks of digitizing archives;
- Archive reading processes;
- Information and documentation: uses and ethical issues;
- Artistic uses of archives;
- Types of archives and storage;
- Archiving and power relations;
- Documentality, virtuality and memory;
- Archives of writers and artists;
- Digital history.
Applications for participation in the conference must be sent to crisa@uniroma3.it by Feb. 28, 2023, by filling out the appropriate form including title, abstract (max. 200 words) and brief CV (max. 15 lines: academic or institutional position, research areas, last three publications).
The official languages of the conference are Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
Proposals will be screened by the Scientific Committee by April 30, 2023.
Papers should be within six to seven pages at 1.5 space for a presentation from 20 to 25 minutes.
REGISTRATION
The registration fee is € 120. For payments made by June 30, 2023, the fee will be reduced to € 80.
For young scholars (Ph.D. students, Post-Docs, adjuncts, and research fellows) the fee is set at €40.
For auditors only, access is free of charge.
The registration fee includes:
- Conference folder
- Access to social activities organized within the conference
- A copy of the conference proceedings.
Bank details for the registration fee will be sent after one’s proposal has been accepted by the Scientific Committee.
CONFERENCE VENUE
The conference will be held on the premises of the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Università Roma Tre, Via del Valco di San Paolo 19), where CRISA currently resides.
PUBLICATION
Final texts for publication should not exceed 40,000 characters, including notes and bibliography.
The texts will be submitted to anonymous referees.
It will be the responsibility of the Conference Scientific Committee to send editorial guidelines to each speaker and inform them of the date of delivery of the final paper.
Scientific and Organizing Committee:
Guido Baggio, Camilla Cattarulla, Angela Di Matteo, Antonello Frongia, Luigi Guarnieri Calò Carducci, Anthony J. Tamburri
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