Unofficial Histories 2015: Call for Participation
HISTORIES ON THE FRINGES AND BETWEEN THE MARGINS
Friday 5th & Saturday 6th June 2015 at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Call for Participation
Roll up, roll up! The fourth annual Unofficial Histories conference will take place in Amsterdam over two days:
Friday 5th June 2015 will be a day of papers, presentations and debate at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
Saturday 6th June 2015 will be a relaxed day exploring the ‘Unofficial Histories’ of Amsterdam.
Like a famous Dutch beer advertising slogan, the Unofficial Histories conference aims to refresh the parts other conferences cannot reach. Our commitment is to developing new and alternative ways of thinking about and producing history and we take our stand with all those eccentrics, misfits, agitators and outliers who have helped to activate radical and dissident currents in our historical imagination.
From Raphael Samuel, we take the view that history is a very broad-based activity that ought to be a common enterprise, both collaborative and democratic. We also believe that history is ultimately a political undertaking and, as Howard Zinn put it, “historians cannot choose to be neutral; [they] write on a moving train.” For us that means exploring the myriad ways in which politics and history collide, fuse, or brush past one another, not just in the content of our interpretations, but also in the forms and practices we use to present and communicate our ideas, and in the general conditions under which we produce them. It also means insisting upon the idea, unfashionable in some quarters, that history still matters and can be a call to action.
The conference invites anyone – historians, curators, writers, journalists, artists, archivists, geographers, film-makers, musicians, playwrights, but also activists and enthusiasts – to participate in thinking about how the past is used and presented in society, from the university and public arenas, to popular culture and everyday life. Because we want to give as many people the opportunity to contribute as possible, especially people who are not experienced conference goers or presenters, we now have a mix of presentation formats:
20-minute conference papers on a theme or topic of interest (please see below);
10-minute presentations that have a practical purpose in mind: group introductions, experience sharing, manifesto proposals, big ideas, works in progress, critiques, inspirations.
Papers, Presentations and Ideas are welcome on any related subject, and might include (but are not limited to):
- People’s History
- Radical and Critical Histories
- Histories of Everyday Life
- Politics of Anniversaries & Commemoration
- Memory, Myth & Imagination
- Histories of Class, Culture and Ethnicities
- History on Film, Music, TV, Radio
- Institutions, Museums, Heritage & Archives
- Feminist, Women’s & Gender Histories
- History Education & Teaching
- History & the Politics of Now
- Uses & Abuses of History
- The Role of the “Historian”
- Commodification and Commercialism of History
- Funding, Ethics & Sustainability
- Technologies and the Internet
- Networks, Commons and Collaboration
The closing date for proposal submission is 1st March 2015. You can submit your proposal online here and you can contact us here.
Please join us for Unofficial Histories 2015 at International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, one of the world’s leading research institutes on social history. We welcome participation and presentations from all sections of the history-making community and we hope to see you there!