The Society of Architectural Historians Historic Interiors Group (HIG), in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University, is seeking proposals for its 5th Annual Emerging Scholars Symposium, If These Walls Could Talk: Fiction, Facticity, and Archives. As the symposium’s title reminds us, capturing complete historical accounts of interior spaces is largely a hypothetical ideal. From activation through use to the clutter of quotidian life, much of what makes interior spaces so vital to study eludes capture in conventional historical sources. This symposium seeks works that peer into those gaps between records and reality, probing the role of fiction, fabulation, and unconventional archives in historical research.

Graduate students, postdocs and recent graduates (2022-) from diverse disciplinary fields of study are invited to submit proposals for brief, 10-minute talks that explore the theme of facticity and fiction in relation to the study, construction, and imagination of historic interiors. Submissions addressing any time period or geographic area are welcome.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:
- the limits of conventional archival sources for researching interiors
- unconventional archives and historical sources
- the use of oral history in the study of interiors
- interiors as archives; ephemeral, undocumented spaces or uses of spaces
- sites of (literary, visual, or political) fiction production
- documentation of fictional spaces
- and fictional spaces as historical sources.

The presentations will take place virtually on September 19, 2025.

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words and a 2-page CV by May 15, 2025 to sahhigessymposiumgmail.com