CFP: 28th American Indian Workshop

From Ethnomuseums:

Call for Papers

28th American Indian Workshop

Organized in conjunction with the exhibition
Premières Nations, Collections Royales
at the
Musée du quai Branly, Paris
10–12 May 2007


"Premières Nations, Collections Royales" showcases a selection from the world's single largest group of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Native American artifacts from eastern North America. Originally part of the collections of the kings of France and of the nobility, they reflect the French colonial interest in Canada and Louisiana and provide a rare view of early styles of skin painting, quillwork, and textile arts as well as of other aspects of the ethnography of the North American Woodlands, Subarctic, and Plains.

Related to the subject matter of the exhibition, the 28th American Indian Workshop will be devoted to the discussion of the following themes:

1. Collections and Artifacts from eastern North America prior to 1800
Early ethnographic material from eastern North America remains a vastly understudied field of research. Widely scattered in European and American museums and often insufficiently documented, these precious documents not only present serious problems of interpretation, but also offer often surprising insights into stylistic change and cultural adaptation. Contributions of 30 minutes are invited, which relate either to individual collections or collectors, regional traditions of early collecting, or artifact types of early, historically collected material from North America east of the Rocky Mountains.

2. Native Americans and Museums
The European and Euro-American collecting and display of Native American material cultural documents has a long history reflecting changing attitudes and modes of representation of Otherness. The more recent interest of Native American communities in self-representation through the adaptation of the Western model of the museum poses interesting questions regarding the role of objects in the constitution of cultural memory and the reflection about the past. Papers of 30 minutes are invited that deal with either Native American or Western concerns and practices in relation to archaeological and ethnographic material as well as works of art from indigenous North America, including the reflection of these issues in literature and the arts.

3. Current Research
The Workshop's traditional Current Research session provides a forum for brief presentations (20 minutes) of recent research in all fields relating to Native American history, languages, literature, arts, and culture

Proposals for presentations, including a title and abstract of up to 100 words, may be submitted to Christian Feest (christian.feest@chello.at ) before 15 March 2007.

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