Skip to main content

Web Content Display Web Content Display

Events calendar

Breadcrumb Breadcrumb

Web Content Display Web Content Display

October 2022

20221025
Previous week
Next week

Faces of postmemory 5 – conflict or negotiations?

Date: 25.10.2022 - 26.10.2022
Place: JU Faculty of International and Political Studies, ul. Władysława Reymonta 4
Organiser: JU Institute of Intercultural Studies, Institute of Applied Linguistics of the University of Warsaw
Contact: facesofpostmemory@uj.edu.pl
Faces of postmemory 5 – conflict or negotiations?

The Jagiellonian University Institute of Intercultural Studies and the Institute of Applied Linguistics of the University of Warsaw are organising the interdisciplinary conference Faces of postmemory 5 – conflict or negotiations? under the auspices of the Section of Heritage and Cultural Memory Studies of the Polish Ethnological Society.

Although Michael Rothberg's book Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization was published over a decade ago, the questions it raises are still relevant. The key questions: ‘Does memory have to be a source of conflict?’ or ‘Can memory become an area of negotiation?’, remain unanswered to date. Therefore, taking Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory as a starting point, the organisers propose to address them. As in the previous editions of the Faces of Postmemory, participants are invited to focus on the acts of transfer of knowledge and experience within postmemory as understood by Marianne Hirsh. However, there are no geographical or temporal restrictions imposed. The conference is aimed to be a meeting place for researchers representing various fields, as well as different theoretical and methodological approaches. That is why the call for papers is open to scholars from many areas of the humanities and social sciences: historians, linguists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, art historians, film, theatre and literary scholars, and architects.

The conference aims to reflect on the following questions:

  • Does the collective memory built around a trauma always has to obscure and compete with the memory associated with another trauma?
  • How do (different) memories negotiate in social space? Can different memories coexist peacefully, given the emotional load related to disputes over historical events?
  • How do social groups interact when their identity was built on the memory of different events or different memory of the same events?
  • Do conflicts of memories manifest themselves only in the social area or can they also concern an individual? In other words, can an individual carry different inherited traumas and how do they deal with such traumas? Does the autobiographical identity narrative allow the individual to successfully overcome memory conflicts?

At the same time, the organisers are open to other perspectives on postmemory and the conflicts it may generate.

The opening lecture will be delivered by Ann Rigney from the University of Utrecht. The conference will be held in both Polish and English.

The registration form must be completed by 31 May 2022. The organisers reserve the right to change the place/mode of the conference. If an in-person conference is not possible or excessively difficult to organize due to circumstances beyond their control, especially due to restrictions, regulations and prohibitions related to COVID-19, any changes will be immediately announced on the conference’s website.

The conference fee - PLN 450 / € 100 or PLN 350 / € 75 (in the case of PhD students/candidates) covers the costs of conference materials, participation in conference, and coffee breaks. The fee does not include the costs of accommodation. The payment details, including bank account number will be provided once submissions are accepted. The PhD students/candidates are required to submit a short recommendation letter from their supervisor. The publication of post-conference proceedings is planned in the form of a peer-reviewed scholarly monograph or a thematic issue of a journal. The organisers reserve the right to select the texts to be published.

Important dates:

  • Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2022
  • Notification of acceptance or rejection: 30 June 2022
  • Deadline for payment: 10 September 2022
  • Notification of conference programme: 25 September 2022