Dear HISTARCHs,

Please circulate this call amongst colleagues, faculty members, and other
relevant parties.

Thank you,

Stacey Camp
Sarah Levin-Richardson
Serena Love
Lela Urquhart

SEEING THE PAST:
Building knowledge of the past and present through acts of seeing

A conference hosted by the Archaeology Center at Stanford University
February 5 – 6, 2005
Abstract deadline: November 15, 2004

Seeing the Past is a conference designed to explore the act of seeing
and how observation leads to certain types of knowledge.  This conference
explores how visual media are used to construct our knowledge of the past.
It will engage in a discussion of a wide range of forms, practices and
theories of perception and the subsequent formation of knowledge in both the
past and the present.

The objective of this conference is to promote productive dialogue and
provide a forum for discussion in moderated sessions.  Papers will be
pre-circulated and posted on a conference website.  All participants are
encouraged to read papers and participate in an online forum.  The
presentation of papers will be limited to a 5-10 minute ‘provocative
statement’ intended to stimulate discussion.   Following the conference, the
papers will be published in Stanford’s Archaeology Journal.

1) Seeing the Past (in the present)
This category encompasses the ways in which we present the past through
visual technologies and media to other scholars, the public and ourselves.
The objective is to explore how different media present different pasts.
Possible topics in this area may include (but are not limited to)
GIS/Digital rendering of sites and monuments, visual modeling, the
commercialization/packaging of the past, the past through photography/other
media, how modern sites are used (i.e. heritage/ tourism), and how the past
is represented in museums.

2) Seeing the Past (in the past)
This category includes studies on how past peoples used visual culture to
understand their past and present. What can an image, sculpture or monument
convey that a text cannot? How did people see? What did people see?
Possible topics may include (but are not limited to) temporal and spatial
development of settlements and cemeteries, rock art, textual and artistic
representations, monumentality, spatial re-use, ritualized architecture, and
landscape studies.

The conference theme is designed to enable productive dialogue across a
range of disciplines including, but not limited to: Anthropological
Sciences; Architecture; Art and Design History; Classics; Cultural and
Social Anthropology; Biology; Cultural Studies; Education; Film Studies;
Dramatic and Performance Studies; Fine Art; Geography; Geology and Earth
Sciences; History; Literary Studies; Museum Studies; Photography;
Psychology; Sociology; Visual Culture.

Abstracts of 300 words (approx.) should be sent to:
Stanford Archaeological Center
Stanford University
Building 60, Main Quad
Stanford, CA 94305-2170
-OR-
Email: [log in to unmask]