1. Call for papers: Creativity and the City 1600-2000: An E-Humanities Perspective

27-29 October 2016, University of Amsterdam
Organised by CREATE and the Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI)
This international and interdisciplinary conference on the history of creativity and the city aims to bring together recent research in the fields of history, arts, and digital humanities. In the last decade, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have explored the complex interplay between places and their culture using a variety of methods and approaches. The conference examines the relationship between cultural artefacts (art, books, etc.) and the urban networks and spaces in which they were conceived, (re)produced, distributed, mediated, and consumed in early modern and modern Europe. How such issues can be studied by means of existing and novel (digital) methods, as well as comparative and long-term approaches, is the second major theme of the conference.
We invite researchers in the fields of history, arts and culture, urban studies, media studies and the digital humanities to submit abstracts. Papers may address all kinds of cultural expressions and products – from books, (applied) arts and theatre, to films, media and music. The committee particularly invites scholars who will reflect on methodological questions and the use of computational techniques for historical research.

For more information, please visit: http://www.create.humanities.uva.nl/cfp-achi-create-conference-2016/

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2. Call for papers: Mapping Networks in Historical Cultural Markets: Methods and Tools

24-27 August 2016, Helsinki, Finland; Session at 13th International Conference on Urban History (European Association for Urban History (EAUH))

This interdisciplinary session explores how networks helped to establish, expand, and sustain markets for cultural products such as books and art, as well as theatre, music and cinema productions. Although the study of social ties among market participants is by no means new, it is becoming increasingly prominent due to historiographical and methodological developments. Recent studies on cultural markets and urban creativity, for instance, testify to the importance of local and interlocal networks for innovation and market development. Moreover, analyses of historical networks have been reinforced by the spilling over of the method of ‘network analysis’ from the social sciences as well as the advent of computational techniques in historical research.

Despite this recent interest, there is still much ambiguity around the concept of networks. The term is often used as a catch-all denoting many different relationships in cultural markets and although most historians are by now familiar with digital network visualization and spatial mapping, their analytical potential and limitations deserve further examination. Papers are, therefore, invited to reflect on issues of methodology and digital techniques, e.g. means of collecting, analyzing, and presenting data pertaining to the relationship between networks and cultural market development. We welcome contributions on Europe and beyond, across different periods, and on miscellaneous cultural markets.

The following themes fit particularly well with the aims of the session:

Different uses of networks by individuals and firms (promotion, information collection, subcontracting, reputation building, etc.);
Comparisons of network structures across time, space, and cultural industries;
Tracing cultural exchange and transmission across inter-local and cross-sectoral networks;
Relationships between networks, affiliations and institutions in cultural markets;
Processes of intermediation in cultural markets.

Session organizers: Claartje Rasterhoff (University of Amsterdam), Dries Lyna (Radboud University Nijmegen) and Karol Jan Borowiecki (University of Southern Denmark)
Deadline paper proposals: October 31, 2015

Notification of paper acceptance: December 15, 2015

Full paper submission: August 15, 2016

Abstracts of paper proposals should not exceed 300 words. To submit a paper proposal, registration in the conference management system is required: https://www.conftool.pro/eauh2016/. The session organisers will decide on the contents of their session and will make the final selection of papers. The authors of the accepted paper proposals will be invited to submit the full text (max. 5000 words) to the conference management system. Deadline for full text submissions: August 15, 2016. The papers will be made available to all participants of the conference in a restricted web area. Paper proposals and full texts can only by submitted online, via the EAUH2016 website: https://eauh2016.net/programme/call-for-papers/.

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3. Call for papers: The Art Market in a Global Perspective

28-30 January 2016, University of Amsterdam, Department of Sociology

The aim of this multidisciplinary international conference is to bring together theoretical perspectives (ranging from sociology, anthropology, art history, economics and geography) that help advance our understanding of how art markets function, while offering high-level qualitative and quantitative empirical contributions to their local and global articulations. We particularly welcome contributions on emerging art markets in countries such as China, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, India or Brazil.

The conference seeks to delve into the shifting relationship between established and emerging art markets through a series of paper presentation and keynote sessions, as well as panel discussions with expert practitioners from the field (gallerists, artists, collectors, museum directors), drawing on experiences from a variety of geographical contexts. The conference marks the end of a five year research project on the emergence and development of art markets in the BRIC countries, financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

For conference themes & further details, see conference website:

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4. Call for Papers: Inheriting the City: Advancing Understandings of Urban Heritage

March 31 – April 4, 2016, Taipei, Taiwan
Ironbridge International Institute of Cultural Heritage, University of Birmingham and National Taiwan University

In the context of rapid cultural and economic globalisation, over half of the World’s population now live in urban areas. Through rural migration, new economic opportunities and enhanced global mobilities, cities and towns have expanded dramatically resulting in challenges to their character and identity.  Visible changes in skylines and boundaries are also accompanied by less obvious shifts in how cities preserve, present and promote their pasts and traditions against fierce and competitive demands for space. Urban heritage, as the valued tangible and intangible legacies of the past, would appear to be an increasingly important asset for communities and governments alike, allowing cities to mark their distinctiveness, attract tourists and inward investment and, retain a historical narrative that feeds into the quality of life. At the same time, new heritage – the heritage of the future – is being created in cities and towns. This reflects the patterns and trends of wider economic, social and cultural change and is resulting in ‘starchitecture’ and new iconic structures, but also in small scale interventions whereby communities are creating and nurturing buildings, objects, spaces and practices that have meaning and value to them.

In this context, this conference seeks to examine the processes of protecting, planning and promoting urban heritage in the face of on-going changes, pressures and opportunities at the global and the local level. We wish to better understand the ways in which heritage can be mobilised in the development of city well-being and the changing approaches to how it is managed, taking into account issues of ownership, responsibility, local and national economies and identities. Critically we address the question of long term sustainability and pose the question of what will future residents, communities and tourists inherit from their towns and cities?

The Conference aims to provide critical dialogue beyond disciplinary boundaries and we invite papers from all disciplines and fields including: anthropology, architecture, archaeology, art history, cultural geography, cultural studies, design, ethnology and folklore, economics, history, heritage studies, landscape studies, leisure studies, museum studies, philosophy, political science, sociology, tourism studies, urban history, urban/spatial planning.

We welcome perspectives on all aspects of urban heritage / heritage in the urban context – world heritage, historic urban landscapes, colonial heritage, religious heritage, intangible heritage and traditions, museum heritage, food heritage etc. For potential themes of interest see the website.

Please send a 300 word abstract of your paper with a clear title and contact details to ironbridge@contacts.bham.ac.uk as soon as possible but no later than October 15th 2015.

www.inheritingthecity.wordpress.com
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/ironbridge/news/2015/call-for-papers-inheriting-the-city.aspx