This call for papers is for the annual conference of the International Committee for Museums of Ethnography (ICME), which is themed “Migration, Home, and Belonging”. It will be held from 17 to 19 October, 2017 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC, USA. A post conference tour will subsequently take place from 20 to 22 October in New York.
ICME is interested to hear how research and museums are addressing historical and contemporary concerns related to Migration, Home, and Belonging. Abstracts can outline how diverse audiences are making the museum a ‘home’ and how the museum facilitates them finding a sense of ‘belonging’ to their sites. Alternatively, abstracts could discuss historical work on collections and consider ‘migration’ from the perspective of object biographies.
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an excellent location for ICME to address the theme of Migration, Home, and Belonging. Exhibitions at this museum, such as “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between The United States and American Indian Nations”, tell histories of Native presence in the Western Hemisphere. The museum raises a range of diverse voices and gives voice to communities that have not been exhibited in a museum setting. Most importantly, the NMAI speaks of the strength of peoples making new homes and creating spaces of belonging.
The ICME conference poses the question of how to make a museum into a place that is inclusive for all voices to be heard in an age of global migration. This call invites all interested persons to make their voice heard. You can send abstracts of maximum 200 words with ideas for a paper (20 to 30 minutes) or panel discussion related to the theme. Proposals (10 minutes) about current work in the ethnographic museum that lies outside of the main theme are also welcome.
Abstracts should include the name(s) of the author(s), affiliation(s) and full address(es), the title of the submitted paper, an abstract in English of maximum 200 words, and the support equipment required. Abstract submissions should be sent as a Word document attachment to Earring Martin at earringm@si.edu, Ulf Johansson Dahre at ulf.johansson_dahre@soc.lu.se, Viv Golding at vmg4@le.ac.uk, Sylvia Wackernagel at swackernagel@yahoo.de, and Mario Buletic at mario.buletic@gmail.com.
The deadline for submissions is 1 June, 2017. For more information, please refer to the ICME website. More details about the conference, such as registration forms and registration fee information, will be available on the website at the end of April.
