CFP: Museum Utopias: Navigating the Imaginary, Ideal and Possible Museum

A Two Day Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium at the School of

Museum Studies, University of Leicester Tuesday 27th and Wednesday

28th March 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester

In everyday life, the chance to dream, to imagine, to explore the idea

of the museum is limited, leaving many museums reacting to change,

rather than being able to think about how the museum could be. This

Symposium will give museum researchers, students and practitioners the

opportunity to consider the changes that are taking place in the world

and how museums might respond to them, using the idea of Utopia as a

place for dreaming as well as thinking practically about how these

challenges might be addressed.



Despite the impossibility of building Utopia, we arguably retain our

need for what Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett (2004) has called ‘the

utopian imagination’. Utopia can inspire us to challenge the status

quo, and to transform our world for the better. From temples of the

Muses dedicated to the arts to today’s democratic forums of debate and

consumption, the concept and the realization of the museum have

changed dramatically during its long and varied history. Stepping into

the Utopian otherworld enables us to engage the past and present

incarnations of the museum, both real and imagined, and begin to

navigate its future.



Papers are invited to address the following key themes, but we welcome

and encourage any creative or imaginative ideas that correspond with

the aims of the Symposium.



Please see the complete Call for Papers here: http://www.tinyurl.com/mutopia


Patrick Cox

Editor, H-MATERIAL CULTURE

http://camden-rutgers.academia.edu/PatrickCox

PhD Student

http://facultyexperts.blogs.rutgers.edu/

Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University

http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/

https://email.rutgers.edu/mailman/listinfo/exploring_childhood_studies