On March 8-10, a national multidisciplinary graduate symposium, “The Collecting Impulse,” will feature presentations by GSLIS PhD student Noah Lenstra and alumni Penelope Yocum (MS '12) and Julia Pollack (MS '12). Assistant Professor Bonnie Mak will serve as the respondent.
The symposium, hosted by students from the School of Art and Design at Illinois, will include paneled presentations of graduate papers, a roundtable discussion of selected readings on contemporary collecting, and a keynote presentation by Bill Brown, the University of Chicago's Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture and co-editor of the journal Critical Inquiry. Its theme will reflect the “contemporary fascination with possession, accumulation, and hoarding, in the wake of events that dispossessed millions of their homes, savings and sense of security.”
The following GSLIS papers will be presented:
Penelope Yocum (University of Illinois, GSLIS)
“Can’t See the Forest for the Xylothek: A Semantic Deconstruction of Wood Libraries”
Noah Lenstra (University of Illinois, GSLIS)
“Genealogy, Family Archives & Genetics: Capitalism, Information and the Compulsion to Collect Family History”
Julia Pollack (University of Illinois, GSLIS)
“The Curiosity of Cabinetry: Through the Looking Glass of the Librarian”
The symposium is supported by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), the School of Art and Design, Krannert Art Museum, The Graduate College, and the Department of Art History as well as the Society for Art History & Archeology (SAHA).