CALL FOR PAPERS CALL FOR PAPERS Narratives of Community and Hope Museums

							CALL FOR PAPERS

Narratives of Community and Hope: Museums and Ethnicity
Edited by Olivia Guntarik
Publisher MuseumsEtc, Edinburgh

MuseumsEtc is calling for essay submissions for an edited book that will examine
museum approaches to the representation of ethnic minorities. We are interested in
essays that discuss the forms of cultural participation in the museum as a narrative and
interpretative space. We aim to feature essays on the ways ethnic communities help to
articulate our interests in marginal voices in historiography and cross-cultural forms of
representation. The book will be oriented towards outlining and drawing together the
current insights and concerns of academic researchers and museum professionals. In
particular, we are also keen to receive submissions from members of ethnic community
groups who have been involved in creating their own narratives in museum displays and
exhibitions.
As public sites, museums enable multiple perspectives into issues of race, ethnicity and
identity, and the ways colonialism shaped how ethnic communities are seen and see
themselves. In the past, museums were often concerned with objects and objectifying,
reflecting various ideas about what was “cultured” or “civilized”. Many colonial exhibitions
played on notions of racial authenticity and purity, and historical progression, which
worked to isolate, “know” and manage images of cultural difference.

Contemporary museums continue to construct and represent who we are as nations,
communities or cultures. The search for relevance and new audiences has led to major
challenges for museums to address issues in multicultural and cross-cultural contexts.
Museums are currently undergoing various stages of transformation, positioning their
pedagogies on a developmental trajectory that function to erase past and existing
inequalities in the cultural representation of diversity. A report by the World Commission
on Culture and Development (1995) argues that: „sustainable development will only be
possible if it is acutely sensitive to, and profoundly inspired by the history and cultures of
all people in the global village‟. This claim to sustainable development can be closely
aligned to the idea of a democratic museology - the equitable capacity to address different
contextual frameworks of cultural diversity. Many community members from diverse
ethnic communities would argue this idea needs to be an imperative in museum
pedagogy.

The proposed book aims to address the implications of this imperative in respect to
representing ethnicity in museums. We invite contributions from a broad interdisciplinary
field that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

     *How have museums dealt with issues of cultural and ethnic representation?
     *What happens when traditional Western notions of collecting and exhibiting are
     rejected in representing ethnicity?
     *What is the relationship between museums in the East and museums in Western
     countries when it comes to representing ethnicity? How are their approaches
     similar or different? What can they learn from each other?
     *In what ways are museums throughout the world addressing the wide range of
     issues within cross-cultural dimensions?
     *In what ways have specific forms of ethnic representation adhered to,
     complemented or challenged dominant national representations of race in other
     public spaces?
     *How should museums seek to deal with cultural diversity in general and
     indigenous and multicultural issues in particular?
     *What have been the responses to museums established by communities that have
     committed to the practice of self representation or challenged the traditional role
     that museums have played?
     *What does it mean to “self-represent” the narratives of particular ethnic
     communities? What are the alternatives and their implications?
     *What issues have arisen through curatorial practices of collaboration between
     museums and communities? How have these issues been addressed?
     *How have ethnic communities responded to the call for them to participate in the
     museum domain?
     *How have ethnic communities represented their stories of migration, exile, hope
     and struggle in museums to the broader community?
     *How have refugee communities articulated their narratives of identity, belonging
     and place in their adopted homeland within the space of the museum? In what
     ways do these stories express their ties to their original homeland?
     *How have ethnic or indigenous communities represented the more difficult issues
     associated with war, genocide, trauma, displacement and dispossession in museum
     displays?
     *What implications have postcolonial museums had on representations of
     ethnicity?
     *How are museums addressing concerns of cultural democracy to develop
     frameworks for ensuring that the mainstream cultural development is integrative
     rather than assimilationist?
     *What guides museum professionals in interpreting and displaying everyday
     cultural objects?
     *How have museums negotiated concepts of national identity and cultural
     difference in socio-political contexts characterised by increasing mobility and
     multiculturalism?


We encourage submissions that address these questions either theoretically or through a
practice-based or case study approach. If you are interested in being considered as a
contributor to this book, please send a 250 word abstract along with a short author
biography to both the editor and the publishers: olivia.guntarik@rmit.edu.au and
graeme.farnell@museumsetc.com by 1 November 2009.
Enquiries should also be sent to these addresses.

                           DEADLINES:
                   ABSTRACTS: Due 1 November 2009
              CONTRIBUTORS NOTIFIED: By 1 December 2009
          COMPLETED PAPERS (3000-5000 words): Due 1 February 2010




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