SYMPOSIUM

New Approaches to the History and Memory of War and Conflict

Date: Saturday 7th December 2013, 9:00 – 17:30

Place: Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories, University of Brighton

Deadline for registration: 29 November 2013

SYMPOSIUM

New Approaches to the History and Memory of War and Conflict

Date: Saturday 7th December 2013, 9:00 – 17:30

Place: Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories, University of Brighton

Deadline for registration: 29 November 2013

Place: M2 Boardroom, Grand Parade, University of Brighton

In this year’s symposium, we intend to explore new approaches to the experiences of war and conflict as they are negotiated, remembered, mediated and lived. The focus of the symposium is not only to chart new lines for both theoretical and empirical analysis of the way in which violent conflicts are (and were) apprehended and articulated, but also the ways violent legacies shape and haunt processes of post-conflict transition.

In addition to the keynote speaker Dr. Santanu Das, who will argue for a more emotional and somatic history of the First World War through the discussion of the experience, often ignored, of the Indians that participated in the conflict, the symposium is divided into three panels. The first focuses on the notion of conflict and violence as it is performed and experienced, but also perceived through bodily frames (negotiated in terms of presence or absence) in cultural representation. It discusses the affective realm of warfare – the relevance of pain, pity and grief for the new current paradigms in cultural history. The second panel maps out the entanglements between the politics of the past and the politics of reconciliation in cultures and societies undergoing violent conflict or dealing with ‘post-conflict’ legacies. It deals with the tension between competing narratives, the effects of binary oppositions, and the ambiguous nature of many of the elements that shape post-conflict scenarios. The last panel examines the geographies of memory as a key element of the understanding of war and conflict. Space here will not only be seen as a material container of violent marks of the past or as the main arena for the struggles over memorialisation, but also as an intrinsic dimension of the practice of remembering.

Bringing together scholars with different yet overlapping backgrounds and research expertises, the symposium will reflect upon some of the issues at play in the ever-growing field of peace and conflict studies. Ranging from ethnographic and sociological approaches to more historical-based research, the speakers will deal with singular expressions of both contemporary and historical violence as it is articulated in a range of contrasting spatio-temporal contexts (Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Norway, Indonesia, Kenya, Afghanistan and England among them), thus tracing and offering solutions to common methodological and conceptual challenges from a transnational perspective.

Speakers include: Santanu Das (King’s College London); Emilie Pine (University College Dublin); Gabriel Koureas (Birkbeck, University of London); Kevin McSorely (University of Portsmouth); Mark McGovern (Edge Hill University); Lotte Hughes (The Open University); Stefanie Kappler (Liverpool Hope University); Safet HadžiMuhamedović (Goldsmiths, University of London), Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Charlotte-Heath-Kelly (Warwick University).

Registration and delegate rates:

This event is open to all but delegates must register in advance. The registration fee is £50 (waged), with concessions for retired/unemployed/unaffiliated delegates (£25) and students (£15). The registration fee includes tea/coffee and lunch.

Booking is now open: You will find a link to the on-line shop on the CRMNH website. Click on the following link and scroll down to bottom of page.

http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/centre-for-research-in-memory-narrative-and-histories/conferences/symposium-new-approaches-to-the-history-and-memory-of-war-and-conflict

Any queries please email Dr Sam Carroll: Memorynarrativehistories@brighton.ac.uk.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Memories of the Futures

Date: 2-3 May 2014, London

Place: Chelsea College of Art and Design (UAL) & Institute of Modern

Languages Research

CALL FOR PAPERS

Memories of the Futures

Date: 2-3 May 2014, London

Place: Chelsea College of Art and Design (UAL) & Institute of Modern

Languages Research

Keynote addresses:

Sir Christopher Frayling, Dr. Malcolm Quinn and Prof. Alberto Abruzzese 

From our current ‘after the future’ position, where utopias have been crushed under the awareness that ‘the myth of the future is rooted in modern capitalism’ (Bifo), our imagination persistently draws on an extensive repository of symbols, forms and technologies rooted in history, imagination and memory. Yet, utopian visions of the future loomed large in the modern age, often fuelled by spectacular advancements in technology, applied arts and industries. Even though sequential temporalities and cyclical views of the past have become forcefully questioned by new technologies, the past is still a reservoir, repository and treasure-trove of cultural and symbolic signification which continues to be revisited and reconstructed imaginatively by individuals and communities. The further into the future you look, the further back in time you seem to get…. The conference will address questions such as: is memory scrambled, reversed, reconstituted? Is the future a thing of the past? Is ‘no future’ the new future? How do ancient myths and narratives construct future scenarios? How are myths and histories re-worked in contemporary artistic practises of the future present?

We welcome submissions on all areas related to suggested topics that include:

*   future memory – postmemory, prosthetic memory and the storage of memory in the age of the social media;

*   utopian and dystopian visions,  myths of the future and revolutionary movements;

*   future construction and reappropriation of the imaginary – myth, symbol, archetype, legend, fantasy, science-fiction and their contribution to imagining the future;

*   future commodities, biopolitics, neo-liberalism and the turn of art, fashion and design in late capitalism;

*   science, engineering and materials at the interface of fantasy and technology;

*   the future of mechanization – toy-making, robotics, cyborgs, automata, androids and clones ;

*   cyberpunk, steampunk and its derivatives (dieselpunk, biopunk and decopunk);

*   time and space models – parallel universes, upward mobility and future ecologies;

*   human/non-human – gene ethics, post-humanism, trans-humanism and the ethics of the interface human/gene machine;

In addition to traditional academic paper presentations, we encourage submissions using alternate forms, such as photographic works, art and design objects or multimedia presentations. Send a 250-word paper abstract to memoriesofthefuture@arts.ac.uk with a mini-bio by Dec 1st. 2013.

Steering Committee: Deborah Jaffe (Researcher and Writer), Georgia Panteli (UCL), Emanuela Patti (IMLR), Katia Pizzi (IMLR), Stephen Wilson (Chelsea College of Art and Design (UAL).

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference:

The Cultural Politics of Memory

Date: 14-16 May 2014

Place: Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference:

The Cultural Politics of Memory

Date: 14-16 May 2014

Place: Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University

Deadline: 31 January 2014

The politics of remembering and forgetting are important social and cultural issues. The authority, power and resources with which to create hegemonic versions of the past – to give authoritative accounts that are available in the public domain – are largely the property of institutions. Questions of power, voice, representation and identity are central to Cultural and Collective Memory.

This interdisciplinary conference will address how hegemonic narratives of the past are reproduced or challenged. It will examine

the role of Cultural and Collective Memory in shaping meanings, values and identities. Papers are encouraged to address the relationship between past and present in Cultural and Collective Memory and how this relates to social power relations.

Papers are welcome in areas such as:

Cultural memory and the archive

Curating memory

Globalised memory

Marginalised histories

Memory and affect

Memory and anti-colonial struggle

Memory and class

Memory as gender/sexual politics

New technologies and memory

Public history

Racialised memory

Religion and cultural memory

Space, place and memory

Theoretical approaches to cultural and collective memory

Please send a 300 word extract and a short CV to: cpm@cardiff.ac.uk .

Deadline for the receipt of abstracts: 31 January 2014.

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference:

Things to Remember: Materializing Memories in Art and Popular Culture

Dates: June 5-6, 2014

Place: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference:

Things to Remember: Materializing Memories in Art and Popular Culture

Dates: June 5-6, 2014

Place: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

Deadline for paper proposals: January 7, 2014

Memory matters. It matters because memory brings the past into the present, and opens it up to the future. But it also matters literally, because memory is mediated materially. Materiality is the stuff of memory. Meaningful objects that we love (or hate) function not only as aide-mémoire but as memory itself.

The international conference Things to Remember: Materializing Memories aims to explore a sustained focus on the materiality in and of memory. Such a focus helps to understand memory as a vibrant process, by analysing the active, creative and popular forms of remembering and forgetting. At the same time a materialist focus entails recognising certain forms of agency in material objects. As Bill Brown argues, a culture constitutes itself through its inanimate objects: ‘culture as it is objectified in material forms’. In this conference we want to draw cultural memory into the discourse of ‘new materialism’, inquiring how we remember with and through things. Here we avoid simple dualisms by foregrounding the intersections between the material and immaterial, natural and cultural, living or inert. Things make us remember (and forget), yet we also use things to bring about remembrance or forgetfulness. We therefore argue that memory is both mental and material.

The conference foregrounds the materiality of memory by investigating the vital relations between past and present, absence and presence, and remembrance and object. We thus interrogate the material transfers through which cultural memories of the past are expressed and circulated in art, media and popular culture. These transfers produce, re-present and transform mediated memories, literally giving shape to them in words, images, and objects. The conference pays as much attention to how we remember, create and re-create memories as to what we remember. Cultural memory is taken as both an active process and a dynamic practice. In such processes and practices of remembering, objects and things are endowed with meaning, agency and affect. As Bergson put it poetically, recollection is like ‘a fold in a material’. This raises the question how cultural memory plays a role in the social and cultural life of objects. Or, vice versa, what is the role that material things and objects play in ‘doing’ memory? That role will entail a study of the interaction between the materiality of memory, its affective nature, and its ideological frameworks. The conference will explore how memory unfolds time in its objectified materializations, both looking forwards and backwards, and realizing the affective dimensions of the here and now.

This conference will be centred on the following questions: What kind of memory-work do objects do? How does materiality mediate memory, for the individual and for society? What is the role of memory and forgetting in the social and cultural life of objects? Or vice versa, what is the role that material things and objects play in constructing memories? How do art objects and practices bring the past in the present? And how do they open up possibilities for a different future? How is the object endowed with meaning, affect and agency through the recollections attached to it?

We are particularly interested in: analyses of what is at stake in the complex processes of remembering and forgetting, of recollecting and disremembering, of amnesia and anamnesis that make up cultural memory; studies of how memory, object and affect are contingent on one another in their relation to time, both looking forwards and backwards; and explorations of how art and popular culture, in producing material memories, may produce a relevant experience for the spectator, visitor, listener or reader.

The conference aims at covering a wide range of artistic disciplines: fine arts, architecture, literature, music, cinema, theatre, digital media and fashion. We welcome proposals for papers as well as for three-paper panels.

Possible topics can include but are not limited to:

Thing-memory

Art as a memory trigger

Literary and artistic interventions in cultural forgetting

Consumer culture as planned obsolescence

The consumption of the past in contemporary fashion

Remembering forgotten writers and artists

The production of presence and absence

The persistence of the historical past

Theories of matter, thing, and object

Trauma and materiality

Discarded and recycled objects

Souvenirs, gifts, kitsch objects

Toys, models, and miniature objects as things of memory

Ruins and material remains of the past

Our previous successful conferences resulted in two book publications:

Technologies of Memory in the Arts, edited by L. Plate & A. Smelik (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009).

Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, edited by L. Plate & A. Smelik (Routledge, 2013).

Please submit your proposal for a 20-minute paper; or for a panel session of three papers through the conference website: http://www.ru.nl/hlcs/programma’s/things-to-remember/things-to-remember/

Conference committee

Marguérite Corporaal, László Munteán, Vincent Meelberg, Liedeke Plate, Anneke Smelik, Lianne Toussaint, Wouter Weijers

Contact information

e-mailadres: thingstoremember@let.ru.nl

CALL FOR PAPERS

New Poetics of Disappearance. Narrative, Violence and Memory

Deadline: January 10, 2014.

Date: 16 and 17 June, 2014

Place: Senate House, London

Organisers: Institute of Modern Languages Research, Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory (University of London), ERC – Narratives of Terror and Disappearance (Universität Konstanz)

CALL FOR PAPERS

New Poetics of Disappearance. Narrative, Violence and Memory

Deadline: January 10, 2014.

Date: 16 and 17 June, 2014

Place: Senate House, London

Organisers: Institute of Modern Languages Research, Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory (University of London), ERC – Narratives of Terror and Disappearance (Universität Konstanz)

This conference gathers together academics and writers living and working on memory issues in Latin America, the United States and Europe. We aim to discuss the way in which literature has addressed the complicated neither-dead-nor-alive figure of the disappeared from the 1970s and 1980s to the present. The term disappeared was popularized in Latin America to account for the crimes perpetrated by the dictatorships of the last century, whereby citizens were detained, held and often murdered without trace. Not only ‘standardized’ and ‘transnationalized’ by Human Rights laws, the term was also translated worldwide to describe similar or analogous cases of uncertain death at the hands of a terror State.

The intention of this event is to identify and explore new poetics in the representation of the disappeared. Allegorical narratives, testimonies and memoirs have been predominant forms of addressing this figure in the aftermath of collective traumas. More recently, however, we are witnessing adventurous and experimental writings of the past and of the self. New generations in particular are exploring original ways of narrating this figure in accounts presented as science fictions and hard-boiled memories, fantasy tales and horror stories, autofictions and online diaries.

Some questions that drive this conference are: what are the common formal strategies, motives, and procedures in the literary representation of the disappeared by the postdictatorship/postconflict second generations? What makes this literature different, in its form and concerns, from both the literature of the so-called ‘1.5 generation’ and from the emerging literary production of the third generation? Are there essential differences between the works by children of the disappeared and works by authors who have no disappeared relatives? Is literature always a progressive discourse when it comes to narrating the collective traumas of the past? Or can it also contribute to constructing social stereotypes such as that of the ‘innocent victim’ or the ‘hero’ and stigmas such as that of the ‘traitor’?

Although the conference is centred on literary approaches to the figure of the disappeared, the interdisciplinary nature of many of these contemporary works means that we can no longer stick to formerly rigid genre borders. We thus welcome papers that cross disciplines (literature, theatre, cinema, photography, performance) and draw on non-conventional formats (including comics, social networks and blogs).

We invite colleagues to send an abstract (max. 250 words) for a 20-minute paper, and a brief biographical note by 10 January 2014 to:

Jordana Blejmar (jordana.blejmar@sas.ac.uk

Mariana Eva Perez (mariana.perez@uni-konstanz.de),

and/or Silvana Mandolessi (silvana.mandolessi@uni-konstanz.de)

Papers can be given in English or Spanish.