Call for Papers: Quarantine: History, Heritage, Place

14-16 August 2014

An international conference convened by historians, archaeologists and heritage scholars at the University of Sydney

The Quarantine Station, Sydney, Australia

The practice of quarantine has always been grounded in contested

locations. The history and heritage of quarantine stations and places of

isolation the world over remain in these landscapes, as built

environments and in artefacts. In this way, sites of segregation have

been both enduring and ephemeral. These vestiges intersect in powerful

ways with memory and history, but what is being invoked? Who - or what -

were the actors bound up by quarantine regulations? How can the

material, documentary, legislative and spatial heritage of quarantine

help us untangle narratives of global movement that were interrupted by

incarceration?

Encompassing people and pathogens, vectors and vessels, flora and

fauna, this conference seeks new interpretations of the place of

quarantine. Moving in scale from intimate marks made by internees to

multi-site or cross-regional comparisons, we seek to bring together

maritime histories of quarantine with analyses of the inland islands of

terrestrial quarantine. Above all, we hope to prompt surprising and

productive conversations between archaeologists, historians, cultural

and human geographers, and heritage scholars.

This international conference builds from a large multidisciplinary

investigation of more than 1,000 sandstone inscriptions that cover the

stunning Quarantine Station in Sydney, Australia. This unique site will

form our venue for the conference, inspiring themes that are both local

and global: mark-making, isolation, identity, and place.

We invite abstracts from historians, geographers, heritage scholars and

archaeologists for papers on:

* place-making and place-marking

* quarantine and dark tourism

* graffiti and incarceration

* shrine creation in places of isolation

* heritage, materiality and immateriality

* traces and spaces of disease

*landscapes of quarantine.

Deadline: 16 September 2013

University of Sydney Organizing Committee: Alison Bashford, Annie

Clarke, Ursula Frederick, Peter Hobbins.

Please send 300 word abstract + short CV for consideration to: Peter

Hobbins

Conecta.