2005 Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Associations 26th Annual Conference
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Albuquerque, New Mexico
February 9-12, 2005

The 2005 SW/TX PCA/ACA Conference will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Hyatt Regency downtown (330 Tijeras Ave. NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, Phone: 505.842.1234, Fax: 1.505.766.6710). Join us this year, as a returning or first-time participant, as we continue our ongoing conversations about collecting at this year’s regional popular culture conference. Further details regarding the conference (listing of all areas, hotel, registration, tours, etc.) can be found at

We invite proposals for papers about collecting, collectibles, collectors, collections and related topics. We seek presentations from collecting scholars, collectors, creators of collectible art/artifacts, and those who mediate between the collector and the collected (such as dealers, gallery owners, and agents). We also seek proposals for entire panels as well as roundtable discussions and workshops concerning collecting, collectibles, collectors, and collections. Listed below are some suggestions for possible presentations, but topics not included here are also welcome. If it’s about collecting, we’re interested!

• Personal collections: your own, or someone you study
• The history of collecting
• Motivations for collecting
• Collecting and categories of identity: gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, class, education, sexuality
• Private versus public collecting
• Legal, political, and economic issues regarding collecting
• The business of collecting: buying, selling, mediating value, the dealer, the picker, the agent, etc.
• Cyber-collecting
• Museum collections, archives, curators, etc.
• Representations of collectors in popular fiction, film, theater
• Collecting as therapy/Collecting as neurosis
• Collecting and “place”: home, community, region, nation, etc.
• Collecting as epistemology
• Collectors' organizations (car clubs, stamp clubs, etc.)
• The relationship between art/artists, collectors, and artist-collectors
• Collecting the immaterial (places, memories, people, websites, words, etc.)
• Collecting and thrift stores/flea markets/garage sales
• Anti-collecting: the de-clutter/organization movement and its impact on collecting

Papers should be approximately 20 minutes long (8-10 pages) and should be original works of scholarship that have not been presented or published elsewhere. Proposals for entire panels should include 3-4 presentations/papers. Roundtables and workshops should be approximately 90 minutes long. Send 200-500 word abstracts and proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, and workshops, accompanied by curriculum vitae, to the Area Chair below, by 15 November 2004:

We also invite you to join our Yahoo group for collectors and collecting scholars, at the web address below.