Skip to main content
Support
Article

Call for Papers: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage - Heritage, Tourism and Traditions

The Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage, University of Birmingham is seeking paper proposals for a conference on "Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage: Heritage, Tourism and Traditions" to be held 13-16 July 2015, in Liverpool, UK.

Call for Papers: Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage - Heritage, Tourism and Traditions

The Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (IIICH), University of Birmingham and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP), University of Illinois are seeking paper proposals for an international conference on "Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Heritage: Heritage, Tourism and Traditions" to be held 13-16 July 2015, in Liverpool, UK. Abstracts should be sent as soon as possible but no later than 15 December 2014, more details and contact information are below.

Trans-Atlantic dialogues on cultural heritage began as early as the voyages of Leif Ericson and Christopher Columbus and continue through the present day. Each side of the Atlantic offers its own geographical and historical specificities expressed and projected through material and immaterial heritage. However, in geopolitical terms and through everyday mobilities, people, objects and ideas flow backward and forward across the ocean, each shaping the heritage of the other, for better or worse, and each shaping the meanings and values that heritage conveys. Where, and in what ways are these trans-Atlantic heritages connected? Where, and in what ways are they not? What can we learn by reflecting on how the different societies and cultures on each side of the Atlantic Ocean produce, consume, mediate, filter, absorb, resist, and experience the heritage of the other?

This conference is brought to you by the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (IIICH), University of Birmingham and the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP), University of Illinois and offers a venue for exploring three critical interactions in this trans-Atlantic dialogue: heritage, tourism and traditions. North America and Europe fashioned two dominant cultural tropes from their powerful and influential intellectual traditions, which have been enacted in Central/South America and Africa, everywhere implicating indigenous cultures. These tropes are contested and linked through historical engagement and contemporary everyday connections. We ask: How do heritages travel? How is trans-Atlantic tourism shaped by heritage? To what extent have traditions crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic? How have heritage and tourism economies emerged based upon flows of peoples and popular imaginaries?

The goal of the conference is to be simultaneously open-ended and provocative. We welcome papers from academics across a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, business, communication, ethnology, heritage studies, history, geography, landscape architecture, literary studies, media studies, museum studies, popular culture,  postcolonial studies, sociology, tourism, urban studies, etc. Topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • The heritage of trans-Atlantic encounters
  • Travelling intangible heritages
  • Heritage flows of popular culture
  • Re-defining heritage beyond the postcolonial
  • The heritage of Atlantic crossings
  • World Heritage of the Atlantic periphery
  • Rooting and routing heritage
  • Community and Nation on display
  • Visualising the Trans-Atlantic world

Abstracts of 300 words with full contact details should be sent as soon as possible but no later than 15th December 2014 to ironbridge@contacts.bham.ac.ukhttps://transatlanticdialogues.wordpress.com/

Related Programs

Cold War International History Project

The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program.  Read more

History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more