Call for Papers

imagining...
The 27th Annual Sahanz Conference

The University of Newcastle, 30 June – 2 July 2010

In C. Wright Mills' 1959 work The Sociological Imagination, Mills argues that historical events are linked, through the "imagination", with the intimate and personal experience of everyday life. Torn between the global and the personal, architecture can be positioned at the same crossroads, where imagination fuels the human experience of an architectural object, memory or event. The imagination also opens up alternative, implausible and disparate trajectories through which the built environment can be inhabited and understood.

This conference explores the role of the imagination in architecture and architectural history. How are broad narratives distilled through subjective recollection? How does factual history intersect with fiction and the imaginary? How is personal experience embedded in historical narratives or architectural fantasy? How would we describe an "architectural imagination" in the context of C. Wright Mills? How does the act of imagining entwine with the work of history and the historian?

We invite architectural historians to reflect upon the theme of imagining in all of its possible contexts. We welcome papers on a broad range of subjects that engage notions of the imagination in architectural history. The conference hopes to explore the buried traces of imagination, which shape our architectural histories of the past and present.

Abstract submission

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent via email in DOC format to michael.chapman@newcastle.edu.au before 18th December, 2009. Please include in the body of the email your name, affiliation and short (200 word max) bio. Abstracts and accepted papers will be double blind refereed and published in a proceedings.