Kinesis: Movement and Mobility The Thirteenth Biennial Bryn Mawr College Graduate Group Symposium
March 25th-26th, 2022
Deadline for Abstract Submission: Monday, November 15th, 2021, 9AM EST.
Please see the end of the document for application and attendance details.
The world is animated by physical motion. From the gestures of individual bodies, to the flows of people across lands and within cities, and to intricate networks of trade and diplomacy, kinesis is fundamental to the formation and expression of agentive relationships. It also shapes human interactions with the environment and with the past. Research on kinesis engages a wide range of questions. For instance, how does mobility inform our understanding of human diversity, and how can it define connections and boundaries between cultures? How do streams of natural and manufactured resources shape material cultures and geopolitical relationships? How does movement—from body language and dance to processions and marches—express emotion, convey dissent, display power, or call for change? What technologies have people used to facilitate motion and to capture and represent it across time?
The Bryn Mawr College Graduate Group invites paper proposals for our 13th Biennial Graduate Symposium. The symposium is organized by Bryn Mawr’s graduate students in Archaeology, Art History, and Classics. However, we welcome studies on kinesis in any time period and from graduate students working across any discipline of the humanities and social sciences. Topics may involve, but are not limited to, the following:
· Archaeologies of mobility: Archaeologies and anthropologies of migration, wayfaring, nomadism, and movement
· Bodies in dissent: Individual bodies in action and mass movements of bodies expressing dissent or creating revolution
· Cosmological mMovement: Philosophical, literary, visual, and scientific ideas about humanity’s place in a large and moving universe
· Forced movement: Forms of displacement, including enslavement and gentrification; Visual and textual approaches to diasporic groups
· Histories of portability: Studies on the complexities of artifacts, technologies, and ‘styles’; social and spatial networks of goods, wares, and finds; analyses of trade and commodity networks as a function of movement; studies on provenance; cultures of gift-giving and of collecting
· Kinetic bodies: Artistic representations of bodies in action; iconographies of body language; studies on dance and performance
· Kinetic ceremonies: Ritual as communal motion; communal events such as sports and parades as spectacle
· Material circulation of ideas: Movements of texts in material forms; ‘itinerant’ images and their vessels; the dissemination of scientific manuscripts and technologies
· Photography and film: Image-capture technologies that arrest movement or that make meaning by reproducing and manipulating the flow of movement
· Spolia: The reuse and appropriation of techniques, artifacts, and building materials, ancient or modern
· Trade: The transportation of raw materials and goods; trade routes as lines of movement, and merchants as mobile agents; port cities as hubs of mobility; travel technologies as methods of movement; the mobility of industries, including the movement of artists and artisans, and exchange of technologies
· Travel accounts: Stories, myths, and visual representations of travelers and traveling; travel accounts as kinetic texts; pilgrimage as a form of movement; the catalyzing effects of religious missions; technologies of travel
· Urban Transit: Studies focusing on the rhythm and flow of city life
Submission details: Please send an abstract of 300-words or less to the BMC Graduate Symposium Committee at [email protected] by Monday November 15th, 2021, 9:00 EST. We will consider submissions from graduate students at any point in their degree. Presentations should be 15 to 20 minutes in length.
Accessibility arrangements: The Symposium has traditionally been an in-person event, giving participants the opportunity to connect with their peers. However, academic travel presented a challenge to graduate students of all abilities way before the COVID-19 related restrictions emerged. Considering the steady improvement of COVID-conditions in the USA, we are planning the Symposium as an in-person event with some papers delivered through synchronous Zoom presentations. Successful applicants will be encouraged to visit Bryn Mawr and give their papers in-person, but we hope to accommodate a number of remote speakers through this format.