New Media and the Arts
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
November 5-8, 2009
The Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling & the Montreal Life
Stories Project
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Proposals Due: Monday April 13, 2009
It has frequently been said that we live in an "age of testimony."
Eye-witness accounts from survivors of war, genocide and other human
rights violations fill our airwaves and our bookshelves. Large Holocaust
testimony projects such as Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah
Visual History Foundation have recorded tens of thousands of survivors.
Thousands more have told their horrific stories to truth and
reconciliation commissions and international tribunals in a growing number
of countries including Canada.
Oral history, we believe, has a pivotal role to play in educating
ourselves and our communities about the social preconditions, experiences
and long-term repercussions of war, genocide and other human rights abuses
(broadly defined). What do people remember and why? How have we approached
the interview? Digital technologies and the arts have likewise opened up
new possibilities for community engagement and research. In what ways have
we incorporated the life stories of survivors in art, documentary media
and practice, performance, museum exhibition, classroom pedagogy, and
other digital environments? When is oral history and storytelling a
catalyst for collective dialogue and political action? Digital
technologies and the arts have opened up exciting new possibilities for
community engagement and research. How do we share the stories that we
record?
We invite proposals in English and French from a wide range of
community-based projects, university researchers, artists and educators,
whose work is publicly engaged and intellectually consequential. Please
indicate if you are proposing an individual presentation or panel session,
one hour workshop, short performance, film screening/discussion, or
booth/display. We are hoping to avoid concurrent sessions if possible. You
are asked to submit a 250 word proposal, curriculum vitae, and a short
biographical statement (to be placed on the web site if your proposal is
accepted) by Monday April 13, 2009. Please send your proposals to Steven
High, Canada Research Chair in Public History, at
shigh@alcor.concordia.ca.
The conference is co-sponsored by the Centre for Oral History and Digital
Storytelling at Concordia University (http://storytelling.concordia.ca)
and the Life Stories of Montrealers displaced by War and Genocide project
(www.lifestoriesmontreal.ca ), an ambitious five year Community University
Research Alliance that is comprised of 40 researchers and 18 community
partners from the city's Rwandan, Cambodian, Jewish and Haitian
communities as well as arts, education and human rights organizations. A
publication, perhaps an anthology, is expected to result.
