Conference: Excavating Absence: Histories of the (Im)material
(This event has passed)

Theme:
Format:
Date:
May 15–16, 2015
Admission: free
Event Language: English with Arabic translation
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/931581070197373/
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6jsi33od38wlps/conference%20Brochure.pdf?dl=0


The Theory and Practice in the Humanities and Social Sciences Workshop at The American University in Cairo is pleased to announce its first international conference. The conference will discuss, through a range of disciplinary lenses, the relationship between the material and the immaterial; the exploration of various archival absences and ethnographic silences; and new techniques for the study of intangible artifacts, such as emotions or cosmologies. 
At a time when the large-scale destruction of archives and monuments through political violence and social upheaval threaten historical erasure in many parts of the world, we believe that these new techniques of social scientific and humanistic inquiry are all the more vital. Moreover, since the experience of the subaltern, the dispossessed and the marginal are often most vulnerable to material erasure, this historiographical attention has clear critical and political importance in the academy and beyond – particularly in a region like the Middle East today.
In keeping with the ethos of our workshop, this conference will bring together a diverse range of scholars from all over the world, as well as local artists, intellectuals, journalists, activists and others, to discuss theory and practice together.

 

You can find the program here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6jsi33od38wlps/conference%20Brochure.pdf?dl=0