Tag Archives: reconciliation

Talk: Music and Memory: composer Jonathan Dove in conversation with Dr Kate Kennedy

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5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 27 April 2018
Lecture Theatre 3, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG

In this conversation, composer Jonathan Dove will talk to Dr Kate Kennedy (University of Oxford) about the relationship of his music to war and remembrance. Jonathan Dove has written works commemorating armed conflict (In Damascus and To An Unknown Soldier) and works invoking collective memory more broadly, as in his TV opera When She Died, a reflection on the death of Princess Diana. The conversation will be illustrated with musical examples.

This event launches the Aural Commemoration strand of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series 2017-18 Post-War: Commemoration, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, which brings together academics, creative practitioners, field-workers and policy experts to explore and compare the ways in which commemorative practices across cultures both contribute to and challenge post-war reconstruction and reconciliation.

This event is free to attend but registration is essential. Please register here.
Event poster: Music and Memory1

CfP: Post-War: Commemoration, Reconstruction, Reconciliation

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Postgraduate and ECR Conference
Saturday 26 May 2018, 9am-5pm
TORCH, Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG

Keynote Speaker: Professor Marita Sturken
(Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University)

This one-day interdisciplinary conference is the culmination of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series Post-War: Commemoration, Reconstruction, Reconciliation. Over the course of the 2017-18 academic year, the Series has brought together academics, creative practitioners, field-workers and policy-makers to explore textual, monumental and aural commemoration and its role in reconciliation and peace-building. This conference provides an unprecedented opportunity for graduates to contribute to and profit from the Series’ findings. Postgraduate students and early career researchers from all disciplines are invited to share their original research in a conference interested in the purpose, practice, significance and consequences of commemorative acts which respond to and emerge from armed conflict. We are particularly interested in what the future of commemorative practice might look like, and how new technologies and social media are changing the ways in which people remember and heal.

We welcome theoretical and methodological diversity, including critical reflections, and qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Possible topics for presentations include, but are not limited to:

– Textual, monumental and/or aural modes of commemoration
– Digital forms of commemoration
– The future of post-war commemoration, including digital commemoration
– The politics of post-war commemoration
– Post-war commemoration and place/space, ecology and the environment
– Post-war memory and/or trauma
– Commemoration in relation to post-war displacement, migration, settlement and belonging
– Diasporic / exilic post-war commemoration
– Post-war commemoration and the body
– Comparative post-war commemoration

‘Post-war’ can relate to any armed conflict and we welcome submissions addressing commemoration across cultures and time periods. AV equipment will be available and you are welcome to use PowerPoint or other presentation software.

The conference is free to attend and will include lunch and refreshments.

How to apply
Please send an abstract of 250 words for a 20-minute paper and a short biography (max. 150 words) in a single Word document to postwarconference2018@gmail.com by Friday 23 March 2018. Applicants will be notified of the outcome in early April.

Travel bursaries
A number of travel bursaries of up to £300 will be available on a competitive basis. If you wish to apply for a travel bursary, please include a short paragraph (max. 300 words) in your application, detailing how your work fits with the themes of the Series and how your research will benefit from attending the Conference. Please itemise your estimated expenditure.

Postgraduate Forum: Commemoration and Creativity, 10 March 2018

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Saturday 10 March 2018, 9am-5pm
Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Headington Road, OX3 0BP

This exciting Postgraduate Creative Forum is part of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series Post-War: Commemoration, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, which explores and compares the ways in which commemorative practices across cultures both contribute to and challenge post-war reconstruction and reconciliation. The one-day event is aimed at postgraduate students across the Humanities and Social Sciences. You are invited to showcase your work in short presentations (max. 5 minutes) and there will also be discussion and activities exploring how creative and sensorial thinking might illuminate and enrich your research.

This is an opportunity for you to experiment with innovative ways of presenting your research in a short format. You might, for example, focus on a question such as: What is the keystone of my argument? Can I summarise my thesis in a sentence? What is my most important finding so far? The rationale is that distilling and presenting the essence of your research will help you to think about it in a new way and thereby produce fresh insights.

We invite submissions on any aspect of post-war commemoration. Please send an abstract of 250 words and a short biography (max. 150 words) in a single Word document to catherine.gilbert@ell.ox.ac.uk by Monday 29 January 2018. Applicants will be notified of the outcome in early February.

Possible topics for presentations include, but are not limited to:
– The modes and genres of post-war commemoration
– The beneficiaries of post-war commemoration
– The ways in which post-war commemoration contributes to reconstruction and reconciliation
– The future of post-war commemoration, including digital commemoration
– The politics of post-war commemoration
– Post-war commemorative monuments and/or museums
– Post-war commemoration and place/space, ecology and the environment
– Post-war memory
– Post-war commemoration and trauma
– Commemoration in relation to post-war displacement, migration, settlement and belonging
– Diasporic / exilic post-war commemoration
– Post-war commemoration and the body
– Comparative post-war commemoration

‘Post-war’ can relate to any conflict and we welcome submissions addressing commemoration across cultures and time periods. AV equipment will be available and you are welcome to use PowerPoint.

In addition to the presentations, the day will offer two sessions designed to explore how creative and practical activities can extend and transform academic thinking:

Three of our Series poets-in-residence, Susie Campbell, Mariah Whelan and Sue Zatland, will lead a Poetry Workshop, in which they will read their own poems and invite you to think about how the cognitive processes involved in creating poetry might be applied to academic research and writing.

Dr Justine Shaw (University of Oxford) will lead a Candle-Pouring, in which you will create your own memory candle scented with ‘rosemary for remembrance’ (Hamlet). As you do so, you will be invited to explore ways in which an understanding of the senses and the body might contribute to your own academic practice.

The day is FREE to attend and will include lunch and refreshments.

A number of small travel bursaries (up to £50) will be available. If you wish to apply for a travel bursary, please include a short paragraph (max. 300 words) in your application, detailing how your work fits with the themes of the Series and how your research will benefit from attending the Postgraduate Forum.

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).