CALL FOR PAPERS

In recent decades the museum has become one of the most widely discussed cultural infrastructures. Visual studies and communication studies, literature and cultural studies, philosophy and sociology, tourist and economic studies have contributed to re-assessing the role of the museum in contemporary culture. Debates have often, rather ambivalently, centred on developments circumscribed as medialisation, theatricalisation, popularisation, digitalisation and commercialisation. The museum has become a vibrant metaphor in contemporary culture. The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to explore this 'museal turn' in terms of its far-reaching implications for cultural practices and politics as well as its reverberations in both the humanities and the arts. For this purpose we invite contributions exploring one (or several) of the following issues:

·       How has the museum been re-conceptualised over the past decades? What cultural, social and medial changes have occasioned such re-conceptualisations? (museum-type venues, feeling worlds, tourist industries, financing structures)

 ·       What productive role does the museum play in a wide range of cultural practices and artistic fields? (literature, dance and the performative arts, hybrid events)

 ·       What aesthetic modes have been adopted for museal practices? (e.g. the architectural space, the fantastic in simulations and attractions, the ironic mode, the epic text, theatrical strategies, music in the museal space)

 ·       What is the political role of the museum in contemporary cultures and how are political messages aesthetically encoded and commercially exploited? (e.g. re-writing choreographies of power, the irenic role of the museum, negotiating the private and the public)

This conference is a sequel to the 2009 conference Museum Narratives and aims to bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines, museum experts, and practitioners in the artistic fields addressed. While we do not exclude case studies, and cases may of course be addressed in the individual papers, we aim at broader assessments and analyses of the issues listed. The conference will be held in English. It also includes a forum for PhD students working in this area and a workshop for teachers. The latter will be announced separately.