Our ideas of and relationships with the home continue to evolve, particularly now in the era of COVID 19. This instability, and the range of experiences felt by diverse groups in different contexts provide significant challenges for theoreticians, researchers and arts practitioners seeking to understand the complexities of the contemporary experience of home, identity and belonging. Inevitably the internal reaches of the home are shaped by external, cultural and social norms, but now, with the heightened tensions about leaving the home, the increased complexity around how and when the home is used and its virtual visibility, the spaces of, and withdrawal into ‘home’ have gained new meanings. The negotiations within these spaces are also affected by relationships – past and present, expectations and hopes, migration and displacement, memory and loss, and age, personal, social and economic factors. As such, the home is far from being stable as either a personal or social framework.

Focusing on the home as an enclosed space with its surrounding parameters, this international symposium aims to encourage dialogues between different areas of expertise and highlight how these new meanings have been experienced within different countries. It is hoped that these conversations will help to extend understandings of this fundamental aspect of being human.

We welcome papers, posters and art works from a range of disciplines including, but not limited to, art history, art, history, literature, architecture, geography and psychology, that explore the physical and mental spaces of house and home.

Possible themes include:
- Home, house, shelter, dwelling.
- Enclosure, boundaries and threat.
- Home, identities and belonging.
- Objects and rituals.
- Collecting for, curating in and choreographing the home.
- Homes in the mind/distant homes.
- Cultural legacies of domestic objects.
- The blurring of home and work – the work/house?
- The studio home and domestic creative spaces.
- The domestic and the intimate.
- The peripheries of home and outside spaces.

This is not an exhaustive list so if you have an idea that does not easily fit into this list and you are unsure about submitting a proposal please feel free to contact either Imogen Racz i.raczcoventry.ac.uk, Patricia Phillippy patricia.phillippycoventry.ac.uk, or Jill Journeaux j.journeauxcoventry.ac.uk to discuss your proposal.

Twenty-minute papers are invited and may include discussion of specific projects that have been undertaken, or be about particular works or ideas of others. All proposals for papers will be peer reviewed. Please submit a proposal of between 750 and 1000 words, outlining your paper / presentation. Please include 6 keywords, a title, your name and address, email address and institutional affiliation if appropriate. If you wish to be considered for a future publication resulting from this event, please make this clear in your proposal and ensure that you submit a full-length proposal of 1000 words.

Proposals for poster presentations should be sent as they will be seen in the poster format, with a maximum of 500 words of accompanying text.

There may be an opportunity to participate in an exhibition to coincide with Coventry City of Culture 2021. Artists, performers and others wishing to be considered should send a proposal of no more than 500 words and five images to Jill Journeaux at: j.journeauxcoventry.ac.uk

DEADLINE for proposed papers, posters and for the exhibition: 30st April 2021
All proposals will be externally peer reviewed and decisions on acceptance sent out 30th June 2021.