April 9-10, 2015

Rutgers University-Camden Campus

Deadline for Submissions: January 5, 2015

Extended to January 30, 2015

OHMAR is delighted to accept proposals for its 2015 annual meeting around this year’s theme,“Oral History and Health.â€

OHMAR invites participants to interpret the conference theme broadly. Some ideas are below. The topics are meant to inspire creativity and broad thinking across disciplines on the numerous and diverse intersections of oral history and health. Ideas include:

• Oral history and psychology, therapy, or military and veteran’s issues.
• Oral history’s use in medical practice, in enabling emotional and spiritual health, in holistic practices, and in other health related themes.
• Oral history projects focused on communities, institutions, or individuals that engage with thoughts about, experiences with, and reactions to health and medicine—even when that was not the topic of the oral history interview explicitly.
• Health, medicine, and the influence on our lives as conveyed through oral history.
• Oral history and environmental health; community health; family health; or the health of loved ones, including oral history at latter stages of life and life histories.
• Doctors, nurses, midwives, and health practitioner oral histories.
• The experience of healthcare workers, providers, patients, and how various issues affect individuals, institutions, and communities.
• Legal, ethical, and moral issues regarding oral history interviews of the sick or dying.
• Creative, dramatic, or journalistic uses of oral history to draw attention to disease or public health issues.
• Any other interpretations on the theme of “Oral History and Health.â€

We invite proposals for entire panels and/or roundtables, as well as individual papers. We encourage presentations that include audio-visual components. We especially encourage proposals from graduate students.

Individual paper and presentation proposals should include a brief abstract of 250-500 words, a biographical paragraph about the author, and contact information. Panel proposals should include a broad description of panel theme and brief abstracts of 150-200 words for each paper as well as biographical paragraphs and contact information for each presenter.

NEW THIS YEAR:

• OHMAR will be partnering with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council for the Humanities (MARCH) to run two concurrent conferences on April 9 and 10. Full schedule and registration details to follow, but we encourage all participants to stay for the full two days of events.

• We strongly encourage new forms of presentations that create an alternative form to the traditional conference paper and panel structure. Ideas include structured conversations, lightning talks, poster sessions, pecha kucha, or other experimental forms. Please email ohmar.conference@gmail.com if you are interested in submitting such a proposal.

Alternative session types include (but are not limited to):

1. PechaKucha – Each presentation consists of 20 images displayed for 20 seconds, with comment, each presentation lasts 6 minutes and 40 seconds, and the highest number of presenters possible is 12, fewer if leaving time for questions
2. Lightning Talks – Like PechaKucha, but without following a set format, Presentations may be from 3 to 10 minutes long and the number of presenters possible depends on the time allotted for each.
3. Open Forum – A topical discussion with chair leading discussion with everyone in attendance. May include discussion leaders to direct breakout conversations.
4. Roundtable Discussion – Three or four participants make very brief remarks then discuss a topic together.
5. Debate – Chair announces the topic, and two other people debate.
6. Standard Presentations – Two or three speakers with a chair.
7. Mini-Workshops – Two or three facilitators offer a one hour, hands-on workshop that gives archivists an opportunity to learn one specific skill.
8. Student Panels – Two or three students create a session using one of the formats listed above.

Deadline for proposal submission is January 5, 2015 January 30, 2015. All submissions should be emailed with attachments to ohmar.conference@gmail.com.  Please feel free to contact us at any time with questions.

We look forward to seeing you in New Jersey in April!