Advance notice and call for papers, re. the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Chicago, USA (April 21-25, 2015) 

Geographers are increasingly contributing to understanding the multiple functions museums serve, much like their colleagues in history, anthropology, and museum studies.  In her 2010 article “Museum Geography: Exploring Museums, Collections and Museum Practice in the UK” Hilary Geoghegan writes,

“Museums and collections offer geographers exciting sites and subjects for research and teaching… [and] that it is now time to consider museum geography more closely” (p. 1472).

Heeding her call, this set of AAG sessions –  titled, ‘Placing the Museum: Towards Museum Geography’ – is designed to serve as a conversation space to consider recent scholarship by geographers and others interested in the social spaces of museums.  Ideally, new and career scholars as well as non-academic museum stakeholders will participate in this set of sessions designed to consider: (1) the changing roles of museums in various geographical settings; (2) the shifting challenges – legal, economic and issues of diversity – faced by museums; (3) analysis of the adoption of new forms of representation and embodiment at specific sites.

A brief list of potential topics includes: Emotion and affect in museums; The growing role of touch, taste and smell at some museum sites; The use of geography to inform museum scholarship; Counter-narratives within the museum and counter-narrative museum sites; Best practices and challenges in handling the “tough stuff” of history; Various issues connected to Children’s museums; Museums and pedagogy; Playfulness and presentation at museums.

Work on both museum research and research on museums is encouraged.

If you are interested in participating in this AAG event, or have questions, please email Arnold Modlin directly at arnoldmodlin@gmail.com,  or contact Amy Potter at amy.potter@armstrong.edu .

Details of how to submit abstracts, and guidance on deadline dates, are available online at http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers