Excavating Absence: Histories of the (Im)material
Ewart Memorial Hall, AUC Tahrir Square
May 15 - 16, 2015
The Theory and Practice in the Humanities and Social Sciences Workshop at The American University in Cairo (AUC) is pleased to announce its first international conference. The conference will discuss, through a range of disciplinary lenses, the relationship between the material and the immaterial; the exploration of various archival absences and ethnographic silences; and new techniques for the study of intangible artifacts, such as emotions or cosmologies.
At a time when the large-scale destruction of archives and monuments through political violence and social upheaval threaten historical erasure in many parts of the world, we believe that these new techniques of social scientific and humanistic inquiry are all the more vital. Moreover, since the experience of the subaltern, the dispossessed and the marginal are often most vulnerable to material erasure, this historiographical attention has clear critical and political importance in the academy and beyond.
In keeping with the ethos of our workshop, this conference will bring together a diverse range of scholars from all over the world, as well as local artists, intellectuals, journalists, activists and others, to discuss theory and practice together.
For more information or to subscribe to our email list, contact tphss@aucegypt.edu
A full program of events and bios of participants can be found by clicking here.
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