The 39th edition of the AIW, titled “Arrows of Time: Narrating the Past and Present,” will be held in Ghent, Belgium. It is being hosted by Ghent University, and is being sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, the History Department, Institute for Early Modern History, and TAPAS – Thinking About The Past. The workshop will take place from April 10-13, 2018.
The 2018 American Indian Workshop (AIW) is titled “Arrows of Time: Narrating the Past and Present,” and the organizers want to explore this theme on three related fronts. Firstly, the organizers would particularly like to highlight the historical connections –political, cultural, and academic – between the Low Countries, modern day Belgium and the Netherlands, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Interest in Early Modern Indigenous interactions with the Dutch in New Amsterdam is growing, but some lesser-known intersections have recently begun to draw wider attention. […] Secondly, the 2018 AIW organizers invite contributions that problematize the uses and notions of ‘history,’ especially with reference to present day conflicts. This a very timely subject as the contested past is increasingly coming to the fore in the contested present. […] Thirdly, the organizers wish to explore the pedagogical and institutional side of history. The decolonization of academia is starting to gain traction, with increased discussion among educational policy makers on how to diversify curricula. How can this be achieved with reference to secondary and university history classes without trivializing the subject material and how can these topics be presented to a wider audience? Additionally, how can we accomplish the decolonization of the past within academia itself – especially in light of the recent controversies surrounding appointments at Dartmouth and elsewhere?
Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2017.