Call for Papers, Panels, Presentations on: Collecting, Collectibles, Collectors, Collections
THE SOUTHWEST-TEXAS POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION/AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION
April 7-10, 2004 San Antonio, TX
This year, we join the National PCA/ACA Collecting Area in our combined Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA and National PCA/ACA Conferences in San Antonio, Texas. In years past, we have enjoyed presentations on a variety of Collecting/Collectibles/Collectors/Collections topics and have continued our lively conversations between sessions and beyond the conference. We seek energetic and engaging presentations that will continue the tradition of enthusiastic intellectual discussion started 4 years ago. Our SW/TX crowd has been described as aggressively friendly and our conference can be guaranteed to enlighten and entertain. Currently Susan Koppelman and Alison Franks, founding and former area co-chairs, are developing several book-length projects on derived from conference presentations.
We invite proposals/abstracts for individual presentations and for entire panels about collecting, collectibles, collections, collectors, and those whose artifacts are collected, for the SW-TX PCA/ACA's annual conference. We encourage presentations from the many Popular Culture/Cultural Studies perspectives, including theoretical considerations and Material Culture Studies. We seek presentations/panels from collectors, from creators of collectible art/artifacts, and from those who mediate between those who collect, those who create or offer collectibles (such mediators as gallery owners, traders, agents) and those who study collecting, collections, collectors, collectibles. We also seek ideas and suggestions for roundtable discussions and workshops concerning collecting, collectibles, collectors, and collections.
Some areas of consideration include, but are not limited to:
Your personal collection; The history of collecting; The impulse to collect.
Attitudes towards collecting artifacts in ethnic, faith, class, educational, racial, social, generational or regional communities.
Collecting and political correctness.
Private collections as passion, as social climbing activity, as investments, as inflation hedges.
Legal issues regarding collecting/collections.
The business of collecting - buying and selling, mediating value - the dealer, the picker, the agent.
The impact of the Internet (including eBay and like sites) on collecting.
Relationships between collectors and curators.
Private collections as the basis for public museums.
Representations of collectors in popular fiction, film, theater.
Collecting as therapy/Collecting as neurosis.
Collecting as community activity.
Collecting as scholarship.
Collectors' organizations (car clubs, stamp clubs, costume jewelry collectors' groups, etc.), their functions, their controversies.
Do women and men, people with different levels of education, people with different class and ethnic origins collect different "stuff"?
The impact of collectors on "folk" or "ethnic" artists/makers - changes in style, changes in gender roles, etc.
What is an "authentic" collectible?
My junk/your treasure, my treasure/your junk.
Economics of collecting/Collecting economically.
These are just ideas that come to mind from our previous experience and from questions yet unexplored by meeting panels; there are many other appropriate topics and viewpoints as well.
For questions about the 2004 meeting at the Riverwalk Marriott Hotel in San Antonio, fees, accommodation and travel information, please go to the 2004 Meeting page of the organization's website (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~swpca).
Please send your proposals (presentation time is about 20 minutes, leaving time for lively discussion following three presentations per panel) to one of the following Area Co-Chairs for Collectors/ Collecting/Collections/Collectibles by NOVEMBER 15, 2003:
E-mail and Electronic submissions to: Amy L. Wink, winka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Please make sure your attached document can be read by Microsoft Word or Apple Works. Word Perfect documents are NOT compatible. You may also submit your abstract in the body of your e-mail.
Snail mail submissions to: Nancy Arnold, 325 Ellwood Beach Drive #18, Goleta, CA 93117.
All submissions will be acknowledged.
Collecting/Collectible/Collectors/Collections Area Co-Chairs for 2003-2004 are
Nancy Arnold, naa1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Toni Mantych, tcm@xxxxxxxxxxxx Amy L. Wink, winka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We also invite you to join our Yahoo group for collectors and collecting scholars, which we will be using to post messages about the collecting area panels for the 2004 SW/TX/PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/collecting_area/