CFP: The Ethnographic Collection as Palimpsest: New Perspectives in Museum Anthropology

This inter-disciplinary panel, organized in the context of the inaugural meeting of VANDA from 19-22 September 2018, will bring an international spectrum of historians of science, anthropologists and museum studies specialists into conversation regarding the multiple research possibilities afforded by museum collections.

Over the past decade or so work in museum anthropology, an up and coming interdisciplinary field traditionally focused on the study of museum collections as a key to understanding these institutions as socio-cultural phenomena, has gained increased recognition, particularly in Britain and the US. With currently four journals dedicated to museum anthropology related issues, the Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA) – a member organization of the American Anthropological Association – launched its inaugural conference just last year, therewith indicating another decisive step in the institutionalization of collections-based research. Bringing together a group of international scholars deeply engaged with hands-on work in museum collections across the world, this panel presents new perspectives in the field.

Ethnographic collections in the museum are palimpsestic accretions that register the traces as well as erasures of the contexts that have brought them in to their respective situations. Proceeding from an underlying conviction in the utility of museum collections and attending documentation for elucidating historical relations between and within native and museum contexts, and a commitment to bringing these into discourse with contemporary life and or source communities, each of the presentations in this panel challenges the current boundaries of what we can expect from collections-based research. With answers ranging from applications in the history of science to religion, and with an emphasis on transnational studies and the role of individuals and interpersonal relationships, this panel aims at showcasing some of the more interesting current work in the field and therewith awakening a greater interest in museum anthropology in Central and Eastern Europe.

Please address any questions and paper abstracts of no more than 500 words to: penaloza.patzak@univie.ac.at