‘Archive and Preservation’, Postgraduate Colloquium 2025

Organisation: University of Sheffield.

Deadline for Submissions: Friday 14th March 2025.

Conference Date: Friday 30th May 2025.

“Let us not begin at the beginning, nor even at the archive.” (Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, 1995: 9).

“To dwell means to leave traces.” (Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 1982: 9).

In the closing poem to his third book of Odes, the noted Roman lyricist Horace declares of his work: “I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish” (Odes III, XXX, 2002: 1-8). Recorded in 23 BC, Horace’s grand expectations for the endurance of his art demonstrates the long history of recorded material as a tool of preservation and a form of archive. In the modern age, letters, diaries, manuscripts, film footage, and the language recorded in these objects continue to preserve the distant past, creating and maintaining a cultural archive that might have otherwise been lost to time. The concept of art-as-archive continues to draw critical attention from scholars, attracting both controversy and acclaim for its role within academia.

For the upcoming School of English Postgraduate Colloquium at the University of Sheffield, we aim to examine and engage with notions of ‘Archive and Preservation’. We welcome submissions in a variety of mediums, including:

• Creative writing pieces (up to 2000 words of prose or 200 lines of poetry)
• Poster presentations
• 15 minutes papers (followed by five minutes of questions)
• 10 minute roundtable papers, followed by time for discussions and questions.

This conference seeks to explore unconventional archives and methods of preservation in numerous forms within the humanities. We encourage submissions from postgraduate researchers from all disciplines in the School of English, or from the faculty of Arts and Humanities (if relevant). Unfortunately, we are currently unable to accept submissions for online papers: all presentations must therefore be delivered in-person only.

Themes may include (but are certainly not limited to!):

• Found footage & montage film as archive
• Preservation of the self on screen
• Preservation (and restoration) of film stock
• Documentary as (digital) archive
• Gothic documentation through letters, diaries, or case studies
• Found manuscripts as a literary device
• Rediscovered authors and forgotten texts
• Letters, diaries and archival documents as literature
• Legacy (and afterlife) of writers and their work
• The writer, poet, filmmaker as archivist
• Preservation of theatrical practices, designs, aesthetics
• Plays, theatre and art as archive
• Preserving language, symbols, signs through history, religion, culture
• Preserving language and identity through idiolect, dialects, colloquialisms
• Preservation (and innovation) of dialectics

Please submit the following information to the PGR colloquium team here no later than 5pm Friday 14th March 2025:

• Name, institution & email address;
• Format (eg. poster, paper presentation, creative writing piece, or poem);
• Submission title & either an abstract of no more than 250 words OR, for creative pieces, a sample of your submission (up to 100 lines of poetry or 500-1000 words of prose);
• Brief 150 word author biography;
• 3-6 key words.

For further information about the upcoming conference, please visit our website here or contact us at pgrcolloquiumsheffield2025@gmail.com.