Tag Archives: memory

CfP: Why Remember? Memory and Forgetting in Times of War and Its Aftermath

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3-Day Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia, June 30th, July 1st, July 2nd 2017

Sponsored by PARC University of the Arts, London; Salem State University,
Massachusetts, USA; WARM Festival, Sarajevo, Bosnia

Keynote Speakers include:
Simon Norfolk, photographer, and Vladimir Miladinović, artist.

In his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies, David Rieff offers a persuasive challenge as to whether the age-long “consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget” still stands in our contemporary era. What should we remember, what should we forget, and why? Do we need to reconfigure the way that we think about memory and its potential impact on issues such as reconciliation and healing in the wake of war? Is memory impotent as a social, political, or aesthetic tool? Rieff’s questions appear more pertinent than ever as wars and conflicts continue to rage in many parts of the world with no end in sight.

These questions of memory (and forgetting) are intensely political and have far-reaching consequences. This conference will engage with difficult and troubling questions around the value and nature of memory such as how do they reverberate in the context of postwar societies, post-conflict reconciliation, prevention, questions of memory and past events? Does memory discourse help us push the borders of how the concept of memory is currently being configured and applied? To what extent do we remember the past and how do we choose what to remember and why we remember? How could and should (consciously and unconsciously) memory processes shape the present and future? How might public institutions (such as museums and other heritage sites that support education/awareness) deal with the past? What is the difference between commemoration and memorialization? Where do they intersect and how might they impact the process of reconciliation and prevention? How can art function as a site of the aesthetic interpretation of the past?

We seek papers from a wide-range of historical and geographical spaces that address the discursive limits of contemporary memory studies, particularly drawing on these areas of study:

• Film/media studies
• Museum studies/objects/ New Materialism
• Visual arts
• Literature/Narrative
• Music/Performance
• Necropolitics/Forensics/Anthropology
• Politics and aesthetics
**Interdisciplinary approaches to memory and remembrance studies are welcome.

There will be two styles of presentations: more formal papers of 20-25 minutes and workshop idea papers of 10-15 minutes. We welcome submissions from artists, early career researchers and post-docs as well as established scholars. We encourage applications from a range of academics, current PhD students, especially those outside of Western European institutions. All papers will be delivered in English.

Paper proposals should include:
• author name(s), affiliation(s) and contact email,
• paper title,
• a paper abstract (200 words max),
• and short bio (200 words max).

Please clearly indicate whether you are submitting formal paper or a workshop idea paper.

This academic conference is linked to the Art and Reconciliation AHRC funded research project currently being undertaken by The University of the Arts London, King’s College War studies Department, and the LSE. The research is under the auspices of the PACCS Conflict Programme.

It is also part of the larger WARM festival, which takes place in Sarajevo, Bosnia each summer, and “is dedicated to war reporting, war art, war memory. WARM is bringing together people – journalists, artists, historians, researchers, activists – with a common passion for ‘telling the story with excellence and integrity’.” See this link for more information: http://www.warmfoundation.org

Registration cost: 150 Euros.

Concessionary rates are available for faculty applying from non-EU, non-US institutions, and for those who can present a case for reduced fees. Information about hostels and hotels will be provided for participants.

Please submit your proposals no later than March 17th, 2017 to why.remember.conference@gmail.com.

Decisions will be made by March 31st, 2017.

The conference is supported by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University, Massachusetts, and the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) at the University of the Arts London.

Contact Info:
why.remember.conference@gmail.com (e-mails get delivered to Stephanie Young and Paul Lowe, the organisers).
Further information: admir.jugo@durham.ac.uk

Also:
contact@warmfoundation.org
www.warmfoundation.org

CfP: The Great War and the Azores: from naval strategy to trench warfare

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Organisation: Institute of Contemporary History FCSH/NOVA; University of the Azores
Venue: Azores Military Museum, Ponta Delgada (Azores Islands)
Dates: 13 to 16 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 1 April 2017

The Atlantic Ocean connects the western civilization in its banks, having in its center the archipelago of the Azores. Intensely contested since the discoveries, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, with the mechanical propulsion and the economic and political rise of the USA, this ocean would know a commercial increase, based on a powerful market economy and a strong power of the financial capital, reinforcing even more its paper as a way of supplying the colonial raw materials, to the metropolises. The presence of powerful marines of war as merchants, with a modern naval industry of great capacity of production, becomes more and more its background scene, namely during World War I. By this view, the role of the Atlantic during the Great War would include the importance of maritime commerce and the need to protect commercial traffic from a Europe at war, taking the consequences of disturbing the enemy, as well as the use of a network of submarine cables with branches all over the world. The entry of the United States in World War I marked the end of the world’s hegemony by the European continent, which lasted three centuries, changing the symmetries in the center of the Atlantic.

The organizing committee calls for proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

– The maritime and terrestrial dimension of the Azores, in World War I;
– Naval and submarine warfare;
– The Atlantic and the communications during the Great War;
– Maritime connections in the Trench Wars, or in the colonies;
– The internal front: the impact of World War I in the Azores;
– War and Memory;
– Museology and Military heritage.

Submission process: Please send your identification (name, institutional affiliation and mail address), Paper title, Abstract (maximum 700 words), and academic CV (1 page) via mail to: azoreswar@gmail.com

Working languages: English, Portuguese (no simultaneous interpretation is available).

Further information here.
Download call for papers: 2017-07-13_Great-War-Azores_EN

CfP: Missing Memorials and Absent Bodies: Negotiating Post-conflict Trauma and Memorialisation

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Proposal submissions are welcomed towards this symposium, which will take place on September 20, 2016 at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The event will focus on the impact of absence on mourning work, memorialisation and commemoration, and the implications this bears for effective reconciliation. Drawing on memory, conflict and cultural studies, the area foci will include, but will not be limited to, the Balkans, Central and West Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. In turn, the symposium will consider the following questions:

How is mourning work enacted in the absence of a (complete) body?
How is memorialisation practised in the absence of a memorial site?
How is trauma and postmemory addressed in the absence of mutual acknowledgement?
How is absence represented in the cultural archive?

In addition, proposals should respond to the following themes:

Missing bodies;
Absent sites and ruins;
Acknowledgement and reparations;
Space, place and mapping;
Postmemory and multidirectional memory;
Trauma and post-war recovery.

Submissions from scholars, researchers, art practitioners and activists with a focus on memory, trauma, heritage, and/or transitional justice, will be welcomed equally.

Lastly, funds are available to cover the cost of a return travel ticket and an overnight stay for presenters travelling to and from Amsterdam.

Please submit a title, an abstract of 500 words, and a brief bio, by August 1, 2016 to Luisa Gandolfo (k.luisa.gandolfo@abdn.ac.uk).

CFP: Object Matters: Making Memory: material and visual culture of commemoration in Ireland c.1800 – 2016

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National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin 2
13-15 October 2016
Funded by the Irish Research Council ‘New Foundations’ Scheme

Deadline for proposals 12 July, 2016

Proposals of c.300 words accompanied by a short CV are invited for 20-minute papers related to the material and visual culture of commemoration in Ireland from c.1800 to the present day. Please email to makingmemory@ncad.ie.

This cross-disciplinary conference will address how objects, images, artworks, buildings, spaces and bodies have worked and been understood in the creation and maintenance of public and private memory in Ireland since c.1800. While topics might include key personages and events such as World War 1, the Irish Civil War and the Manchester Martyrs, we also encourage proposals that address the commemoration of lesser-known histories.

Commemorative culture might encompass events such as ceremonies and parades, artefacts such as souvenirs or artworks, institutional practices such as collecting and exhibiting, particular sites such as commemorative buildings, graveyards and ceremonial spaces, and private modes of visual and material remembrance such as domestic mnemonic objects.

The conference should contribute to our understanding of how ideas about the past have been visualised, manufactured, articulated, materialised, distributed and performed.

Proposals are welcomed from researchers and practitioners across various fields including Art practice, Archaeology, Anthropology, Geography, Architectural History, History of Design, Material Culture, Visual Culture, Memory Studies, Museum Studies, Art History, History of Media, Cultural History, Sociology and Critical theory. A publication is planned based on the conference proceedings. For the proceedings of the first Object Matters conference Making 1916: material and visual culture of the Easter Rising, see http://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/60501.

Deadline July 12, 2016. Participants will be notified by July 22.

Conference Convenor Dr. Lisa Godson, National College of Art & Design
Conference Administrator Kate Butler, BL

Supported by the National College of Art and Design + University College Dublin Centre for Creative Arts and Critical Cultures / National Gallery of Ireland/Irish Museums Association / Irish Architecture Foundation / GradCAM

Enquiries and proposals should be directed to: makingmemory@ncad.ie

CfP: War and its Aftermath: Veteran Treatment and Reintegration in Post-War Societies

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War destroys everything. Even the lives of those who survive the war are destroyed. Financial hardships, trauma, and the demand for reintegration by peaceful societies are burdens for those who return alive from the battlefield of the former war. However, the post-war societies have to struggle to provide sufficient possibilities for reintegration of veterans into the new peaceful life as well. In all periods of human history political entities and states have tried to find a way for such a reintegration without triggering the violent potential that is represented by former soldiers. Despite such attempts, modern nation states and societies still struggle with the task to find a solution for veteran reintegration in post-war environments. The editors of the planed volume want to analyze the historical aspects of veteran treatment and veteran reintegration — without chronological or geographical limitations — and therefore welcome proposals for chapters that deal with, but are not limited to the following topics:

the veteran as a radical force in post-war societies
veteran education in post-war societies
political movements and veterans
paramilitarism in post-war societies
trauma treatments
medical issues and veterans
economic perspectives on veteran reintegration
veterans and memory in post-war societies
veteran rights movements
veterans and the post-war state
veterans and social relations

Proposals (ca. 300 words) and a short CV should be sent to fjacob@qcc.cuny.edu and stefan.karner@uni-graz.at until July 15, 2016. Final chapters, 7,000-10,000 words, using footnotes (Chicago Manual of Style) are due by October 15, 2016.

Contact Info:
Frank Jacob, History Department, CUNY-QCC, 22205 56th Ave, Bayside, 11364 New York

Symposium: Nova Scotia and the Great War Revisited: Cultural Communities, Memory and the First World War

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It has been 100 years since the “war to end all wars”, from 1914 to 1918. Come hear academic, museum, community and youth speakers share ideas and discuss new research on the little-known contributions of cultural communities in Nova Scotia to the conflict. Explore different community views on the importance of commemoration and memory of the experience of the First World War. See how local Nova Scotian contributions fit in the larger Atlantic Canadian, national and international contexts.

Presentations Include
• No. 2 Construction Battalion in July 1916: Importance for African Nova Scotians
• Experiences of the Mi’kmaq, Acadian and Gaelic Nova Scotian communities
• Child soldiers
• The Jewish Legion at Fort Edward in Windsor

Youth Panels
Vimy Foundation participants and Avon View High School

Why is the memory of the Great War still important to students and youth today?

Keynote Speakers
Jonathan Vance, University of Western Ontario
The First World War, Memory and Popular Culture in Canada

Sean Cadigan, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Myth, Memory and the First World War in Atlantic Canadian communities

Friday, June 10th 2016, 12pm to 7:30pm and Saturday, June 11th 2016, 9am to 7pm

Hants County War Memorial Community Centre, 78 Thomas St., Windsor, NS

Full program: http://www.smu.ca/webfiles/Symposiumschedule.pdf

Free Admission, All welcome.

Register in advance:
Online: http://www.smu.ca/NSFirstWorldWar
Phone: 902-420-5668
Email: gorsebrook@smu.ca

Contact Info:
Organized by the Nova Scotia Museum, Saint Mary’s University Gorsebrook Research Institute, Centre d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, Army Museum Halifax Citadel, and Parks Canada.

New blog for Oxford’s WWI Centenary ‘Continuations and Beginnings’ website

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Hanna Smyth, who is completing her DPhil on the relationship between Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites and identity, recently contributed to the University of Oxford’s WWI Centenary ‘Continuations and Beginnings’ website. Her blog, WWI Memorials of the British Empire: Identity and Memory on the Western Front, can be accessed here.