CFP: Symposium on Memory, Culture, and Documentation of the COVID-19 Pandemic at LOC

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (LOC) invites proposals to a symposium titled, “From Lived Experience to Public Memory: Commemorating, Documenting, and Archiving Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” on March 12 and 13, 2026, at the LOC in Washington, DC. Scholars, artists, documentarians, archivists, and community-based practitioners working at the intersection of COVID-19 and cultural heritage are welcomed to submit proposals.

Themes for proposals may include, but are not limited to:

• Relationship(s) between COVID-19 documentation and other moments of disaster/crisis 
• Archival documentation of the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Community-based documentation and the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Public memory/commemoration and the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Oral history/ethnography and the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Cultural practices related to music, material culture, and other expressive media and the COVID-19 pandemic  
• Ethical/theoretical considerations for documenting public health crises/sites of trauma 

Symposium organizers welcome proposals for 20-minute paper presentations (with 10-minute Q&A sessions), 90-minute panels, and/or creative works to be performed. The deadline for submissions is June 16, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET. Applicants will be notified in August 2025 about decisions regarding their proposals.