Date:
Location: United States Online
The Society of Architectural Historians Historic Interiors Group (HIG), in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University, invites you to the 5th Annual Emerging Scholars Symposium, If These Walls Could Talk: Fiction, Facticity, and Archives.
Date: September 19, 2025 (virtual/online)
Time: 11 am–2 pm EDT [UTC/GMT -4 hours]
Registration Link: https://sah1365.zoom.us/meeting/register/d3EHL2NhSKWAKJdE3yWYFg
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 presents 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 from diverse disciplinary fields of study will present short talks that explore the theme of facticity and fiction in relation to the study, construction, and imagination of historic interiors. The six presentations explore topics such as the limits of conventional archival sources for researching interiors, interiors as archives; sites of (literary, visual, or political) fiction production; and fictional spaces as historical sources.
Link for more information, including Schedule and Speakers Biographies: https://sahhistoricinteriorsaffiliategroup.sah.hcommons.org/2025/08/10/if-these-walls-could-talk-fiction-facticity-and-archives/
