SAH Historic Interiors Affiliate Group (HIG)
Digital Interiors: Emerging Scholars Symposium
The SAH Historic Interiors Affiliate Group (HIG) is seeking proposals for its 2nd Annual Emerging Scholars Symposium: Digital Interiors, to be held virtually in June 2022. The shift to virtual work and learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has provoked lively debate among scholars and students about the benefits, and risks, of substituting digital platforms for built space. More sustained attention is required, however, to assess the impact of digital media on interiors as a discipline – particularly where the interiors involved predate digitization as either a resource or a methodology. Addressing a wide range of issues from globalization to community access, preservation to pedagogy, this symposium will consider digital and new media from the perspective of the historic to elucidate the ways in which they interact with, improve, complicate, or threaten the study of traditionally material culture and analog records.
Current graduate students and early-career researchers and professionals are invited to submit proposals for brief, 10-minute talks that explore the theme of digitality in relation to the study and practice of historic interiors. Topics might include, but are not limited to, digital methods of research and conservation, such as 3D modeling or databasing of interiors archives; digital technology within the historic interior, including ‘smart’ displays and app-based guides; or interiors that are themselves digital, such as Zoom classrooms, Open Access libraries, and virtual museum tours. The aim of the symposium is proactively to reflect on how the digital informs not only how we, as historians, go about answering questions but also which questions we ask. Please note: SAH/HIG membership is not required for participation.
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a 2-page CV by April 8, 2022 to sahhigessymposium@gmail.com.