Puebla (Mexico), 26–29 April, 2022
Call for papers
The International Network for Theory of History (INTH) is pleased to announce that its fourth network conference will take place in Puebla, Mexico on 26, 27, 28 and 29 April 2022 at the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities ‘Alfonso Vélez Pliego’, Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP). Histories are not what they used to be. Once primarily associated with dusty books and documents, histories seem less bound to the written or even verbalized format and increasingly appeal to all of our senses. At times they do so with so much skill and persuasiveness that they fully immerse us in their presence and no longer look, sound, feel or smell like History at all.
New ‘media of historical expression’ (Morris-Suzuki) have been proliferating in academia and beyond, with histories being mediated and remediated (Bolter & Grusin) in computer games, virtual reality, reenactments, comic books, films and web-based digital environments among others. Most of these media paradoxically strive to erase any trace of mediation – generating a sense of unmediated contact with the past. These media and types of mediation are driven by mediators – e.g. game developers, re-enactors, film directors, artists, activists – who increasingly challenge professional historians’ ‘hegemony in the sphere of retrospection’ (Ricoeur). The new visual, aural and tactile technologies of historical mediation have evoked Luddite sentiments among some historians who feel threatened in their traditional existence as artisan wordsmiths. Others, however, have welcomed the new media of historical expression and celebrate their potential in relation to furthering and communicating historical knowledge as well as creating new possibilities for historical education.
