Heritages of Migration: Moving Stories, Objects and Home

The early colonization of the Americas represented the layering of cultures and new inscriptions of place. Today we see conceptions of the stability of ‘old world’ that have been challenged by centuries of two-way flows of people and objects, each engendering new meanings, allowing for new interpretations of landscape, the production of identities and generating millions of stories. The emergence of the ‘new world’ in opposition to the old – in real, imaginary and symbolic terms  – problematizes sense of place and induces consideration of a ‘placelessness’ as a location for ideas of home, memory and belonging. This conference looks at the actors and processes that produce and reconfigure the old world in the new, and the new world in the old across the Atlantic – north and south – through constructions of heritage in material and immaterial form.  Its focus is upon the widely conceived Trans-Atlantic but we also welcome contributions that focus on the heritages of migration from around the world.
Held at the National Museum of Immigration, Buenos Aires, Argentina – a country that itself has seen mass immigration – this conference asks:

• What objects and practices do migrants value and carry with them in their movements between old and new worlds?
• How do people negotiate and renegotiate their “being in the world” in the framework of migration?
• How is memory enacted through material culture and heritage into new active domains?
• What stories are told and how are they transmitted within and between migrant communities  and generations?
• How is the concept of home made meaningful in a mobile world?
• Where do performances of identity “take place” so as to generate new landscapes of collective memory?
• How do the meanings of place and placelessness change over generations from an initial migration?

The conference is designed encourage provocative dialogue across the fullest range of disciplines Thus we welcome papers from academic colleagues in fields such as anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, business, communication, ethnology, heritage studies, history, geography, literary studies, media studies, museum studies, popular culture, postcolonial studies, sociology, tourism, and urban studies.

• Indicative topics of interest to the conference include:
• The heritage of trans-Atlantic encounters – ways and means of crossing distances
• Performing place and new inscriptions of placelessness
• Migration and urban territories – settlement processes and practices
• Travelling intangible heritages – the rituals, practices, festivals of home away
• Diasporic heritage communities
• Migrating memories
• Representations of migration/immigration in popular culture

How to submit an abstract

Abstracts of 300 words submitted in the conference format should be sent as soon as possible but no later than October 14 2016. Please click on the link below to submit your abstract via our online form: www.universityofbirmingham.submittable.com
If you have any difficulty with the online submission form, or any other queries, please email Hannah Stretton at Ironbridge@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

Organisers: Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage (University of Birmingham, UK), Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy (CHAMP, University of Illinois)

In partnership with: Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF, Argentina), UNESCO Chair in Cultural Tourism (Argentina), Museums of Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (National Museum of Immigration, Argentina)