Objects in Motion: Recent Episodes
Cambridge University
Objects in Motion brings together scholars, curators and artists from around the world to dialogue about material objects in transition - cultural, temporal and geographical.
All material objects are produced within specific contexts – whether they are ancient Roman tombstones, century-old Inuit clothing, or modern video games. How are differences in use and meaning negotiated when these objects transition into other contexts? What continuities remain, and what is reinterpreted and refashioned? How does this affect the meanings and knowledge embodied in, or found with, such objects?
The subjects discussed will range in time from antiquity to the present day, and in geography across different continents. The individual disciplines encompassed include history, history of science and medicine, anthropology, social anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, art and performance, history of art, geography, digital humanities, museums, and cultural heritage.
This breadth of speakers and topics will facilitate a fruitful exploration of material culture dynamics which are central to the human experience even in an era of multinational corporations, global communication, and increasing standardisation. It will also foster discussion of the different disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to studying and communicating about these themes.
Image courtesy of williambeem.com from Flickr Creative Commons
Rachel Hand (Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)
Co-authors Billie Lythberg, Wonu Veys, Hūfanga ‘Okusitino Māhina & Semisi Fetokai Potauaine
Polity in motion: 18th century musical instruments and the regalia of Tonga’s sacred chief
Christina Williamson (Carleton University Ottawa)
Movement and Meaning in a Century-Old Inuit Parka
Katharina Nordhofen (University of Vienna)
More than a frame: strategies of appropriation of Byzantine ivories on Ottonian book covers
Petra Tjitske Kalshoven (University of Manchester)
Animal artefacts: categorical trespassing by the curiously lifelike
Willemijn van Noord (University of Amsterdam)
An ancient mirror in motion: from China through Siberia to the Netherlands and back (c. 100 BCE - 1700 CE)
Elsje van Kessel (University of St. Andrews)
Temporary exhibitions as object movers in early modern Italy
John P. McCarthy (Delaware State Parks) — presented by Chris Wingfield (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge)
Extraordinary Uses of Ordinary Things: Negotiating African Identity at the Cemeteries of the First African Baptist Church, Philadelphia
Emma Martin (National Museums Liverpool / University of Manchester)
The transition of Tibetan book-covers into colonial worlds
Nicholas Thomas (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
A critique of the natural artefact: rethinking re-contextualisation
Nazneen Ahmed (University College London)
Religious objects in motion: Two Ealing Case Studies
Paul Gooding and Stephen Bennett (University of East Anglia)
“A Link to the Past”: Remastered Videogames and the Material Archive
Dora Vargha (University of London)
Traveling pathogens, flying vaccines: a story of failure in global polio vaccination
Stephanie Bunn (University of St. Andrews)
The pattern of the past in the present: felt textiles in transition in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia
Amal Sachedina (Brown University)
More Coffee Anyone: The Coffeepot as an Object of Reform and Restoration in the Sultanate of Oman