Abstracts due: November 15, 2024

Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2024

Paper or presentation draft due: January 31, 2025

Workshop dates: Friday, April 4 & Saturday, April 5, 2025

The Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan invites proposals for papers for the 14th Annual International Graduate Student Workshop, to be held on Friday, April 4th & Saturday, April 5th, 2025. This conference will be in-person at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, under the title “The Archive in Theory and Practice in Armenian Studies.”

Over the years, the Center for Armenian Studies has fostered dialogue with graduate students from around the globe through our annual graduate student workshops. Together with our faculty, graduate students, and visiting and postdoctoral fellows, we have charted new scholarly territory in Armenian Studies through these collective efforts.

This year’s workshop seeks to uncover the ways scholars engage with archives in their work in Armenian Studies research, both in theory and in practice. While “the archive” in humanities and social science scholarship is often invoked through metaphorical and conceptual terms to mean history or canon as a whole, this workshop encourages applicants to both seriously engage with, and play with the bounds of, archival theory.

For instance, how might we expand our notion of what the archive is, how it is formed, and by whom it is shaped? In what ways do formal and institutional archives need to be rethought in order to better represent the Armenian community, or subsets of the Armenian community? In what ways might the Western construction of archives hinder or preclude preservation of a displaced or destroyed Armenian history? What practical challenges are faced by scholars undertaking archival research or using primary sources, and what new solutions or innovations are being proposed to overcome them? This workshop seeks presentations that address these questions, ask new ones, or are exploring an entirely different direction for archival research in Armenian Studies. Applicants should engage with archives in a meaningful way, yet need not be steeped in archival literature; this conference seeks to engage scholars working with “archives” in ways they themselves deem significant.

Topics addressed may include, but are not limited to:

  • Politics of collecting and recordkeeping
  • Primary source usage in Armenian institutions
  • Reimagining or redefining formal and institutional archives
  • Gaps, silences, deletions, or omissions in existing archives
  • Displacement and/or rebuilding of archives or archival institutions
  • Use and misuse of primary sources
  • Practical challenges and solutions to archival access
  • Metadata and finding aids of Armenian records and collections
  • Categorization and organization
  • Curatorial practices of Armenian records
  • Materiality
  • Ephemerality and preservation
  • Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic archives
  • Oral history, storytelling, and narrative tradition
  • Digital archives and emerging technologies
  • Public history, exhibition, access, or exposure
  • Legal policies and governance
  • The formation of a contemporary archive
  • Personal reflections on primary source use
  • Archival futures

Please submit an abstract of 250 words along with a CV by Friday, November 15, 2024, using this form: myumi.ch/3Qpx2.

Successful applicants will need to submit a paper or draft of presentation text (approximately 2000 - 2500 words) by January 31, 2025 to be circulated among workshop participants. Participants are also welcome to submit a draft of presentation slides at this time. The symposium will prioritize first-time applicants. At the workshop, participants will have 15 minutes to present their main arguments, plus additional time for questions and discussion.

CAS will make every effort to cover travel expenses. Per donor guidelines, preference will be given to those traveling from the Republic of Armenia.

This workshop, sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Center for Armenian Studies and funded by the Manoogian Foundation, is organized by Emma Avagyan (PhD student in Middle East Studies), Nazelie Doghramadjian (PhD student in Information Studies), and Allison Grenda (PhD student in the History of Art). For questions, please email armenianstudies@umich.edu.