Call for Papers ESSHC 2010 - Network Culture

The Culture Network, one of the larger networks within the ESSHC, invites you to offer a proposal for a paper or a session for the 2010 Conference. The ESSHC will take place from Tuesday April 13 to Friday April 16 2010 in Ghent.

This is an open call. You are free to suggest any theme for the 2010 Conference as long as it relates to cultural history. However, please note that the networks will be especially selective this year since the number of possible sessions is limited. The Culture Network can accommodate 17 sessions. Papers stand a better chance of being selected if they fit together with other papers, and the best way to ensure this is to organise a session, or a group of sessions, yourself.

Suggested sessions

• performance and ritual
• media and mediation
• cultures of communication
• emotions and the self
• mobility, travel, tourism
• ego documents: diaries and letters
• identities
• culture of science
• representation and agency
• dominant culture and counter images/texts
• inventing tradition
• (conflicting) identities
• constructing cultural heritage

The list is neither exhaustive nor exclusive. Please feel free to make suggestions for a paper or, preferably, a session proposal.

If you wish to do so it will be wise to discuss your proposal beforehand with the Chairs of the Culture Network:

Marga Altena, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL (M.Altena@rs.ru.nl)
Joris van Eijnatten, VU University Amsterdam, Department of History, NL (j.van.eijnatten@let.vu.nl)
Magdalena Elchinova, New Bulgarian University, Department of Anthropology, (melchinova@hotmail.com)

How to propose a paper:
Fill out the pre-registration form on the Internet: http://www.iisg.nl/esshc. Include an abstract of your paper (100-500 words). Abstracts that are sent in through the Internet will be put on the Internet. Please send in your form as soon as possible, but before 1 May, 2009 at the latest. No individual may present more than one paper. However, every participant can act as a chair or commentator in addition to presenting a paper. A participant cannot act as chair or commentator in the same session he/she is presenting a paper.

How to organise a session:
Gather four speakers who each will present a paper on a related topic, a commentator who will introduce the discussion with a prepared comment on the papers and a chair. The roles of the session organizer, chair and commentator can be fulfilled by the same or by different persons. Confirm participation and arrange with these individuals the (date of) exchange of papers and the way the session will be conducted. If possible, have one or more substitute speakers at hand in case of withdrawal of one of the speakers. Submit the proposal for a session with a pre-registration form for each individual speaker. The deadline for this is May 1, 2009, but please send your form as early as possible. Contact the speakers regularly; to make sure that the preparation of the session is progressing, as you would want it to be.

Other kinds of sessions are possible as well:

• Meet the Author sessions, in which several experts comment on a recent and important book, after which the author responds.
• Round table sessions, in which several experts discuss the same topic rather than present research results.

All creative proposals are welcome, as long as sessions do last not more than two hours and give ample opportunity for the participation of the audience in discussions. Session organisers should make arrangements made for the distribution of papers among participants well before the conference, in order to enable discussions.

Note that the deadline for submitting your proposal (1 May 2009) is fixed. Proposals submitted after this date will not be accepted.