Towards a Common Past

Links

Here you can find information about national and international conferences, workshops, seminars and PhD courses taking place outside of the framework of the Nordic network in Memory Studies, as well as other relevant links.

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Call for Papers: Memory - Silence, Screen and Spectacle, March 24-26 2011,The New School, New York. Abstracts are due November 22, 2010

Please see the following link:

http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/subpage.aspx?id=57135

Concentrationary Imaginaries/Imaginaries of Violence in Contemporary Cultures and Cultural Forms

Keynote Speakers:

Andrew Benjamin (Monash) Adriana Cavarero (Verona)
Paul Gilroy (LSE) Ian James (Cambridge)
Paul Willemen (Ulster) Samuel Weber (Northwestern)
With a plenary by Zygmunt Bauman (Leeds)

An international transdisciplinary conference organized by the AHRC Research Project Concentrationary Memories: The Politics of Representation directed by Griselda Pollock(Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History) and Max Silverman(Centre for French and Francophone Cultural Studies)

April 13-15 2011
University of Leeds

In 1946 French Trotskyist political deportee to Buchenwald coined the phrase ‘concentrationary universe’ to describe the terrifying sociological experiment in total destruction of humanity in which, according to Hannah Arendt, ‘everything is possible’. Our question is: has anything of the concentrationary universe seeped into and been disseminated through contemporary culture? Going beyond the work of Agamben and Virilio who suggest that the camp and war are now the matrices of modern society, we want to enquire into cultural forms and subjectivities. Is there now a concentrationary imaginary? What would be its indices, symptoms, locations, tropes and affects? Where might we find it? Is the concentrationary a dimension of heightened violence, of fantasies of apocalyptic, end-of-time confrontations, of the manner in which ‘others’ are projected as both fascinating and deadly? Is it about thoughtlessness and amnesia? Has it been eroticised and stylized via fascist kitsch? Has it found a home or a counter-imaginary in science fiction? Is it linked with images of pestilence, viral contamination, deadly epidemics? What might resist its seepage and normalization?

Far from being contained as a one-off, geopolitically contained event, the Nazi-created concentrationary and its horrific extension, the exterminationary, initiated the political novelty that Arendt defined as totalitarianism. Totalitarianism was an experiment in the destruction of the human, which Arendt came to identify with spontaneity and plurality. Not confined to the Third Reich, the concentrationary was a feature of Stalin’s Soviet Union but also in differing guises is typical of racist societies and dictatorships. If the political lessons of the concentrationary universe led Hannah Arendt to seek to refound a basis for social life in the human condition, is the concentrationary imaginary continuing to put humanity, or our humanity, at risk?

In this conference we wish to investigate the often oblique manifestations of the legacies of the concentrationary in diverse forms of contemporary culture from literature, to cinema, and video games. Can aspects of the increasing obsessions with violence in media culture be related to an unacknowledged concentrationary legacy? Where is the concentrationary most visible? Is it identifiable by a lack of conscious memory that might continuously warn of its menace? In what forms has the concentrationary continued in political realizations, but also in their underlying imaginations and in imaginary forms? Where might we locate its signs? What are its effects on the subjectivities such cultural manifestations help to shape?

We suggest the following areas for the study of the emergence, persistence and transmogrification of a concentrationary imaginary and for seeking to challenge the continuing menace of that which the concentrationary universe and gulags initiated in the heart of twentieth century Europe.

Post Holocaust Political Theory, Fascinating Fascism Science Fiction and the Concentrationary Empire Contemporary Apocalyptic Art :Images of Fear Popular Culture, Racism and Others Counter-concentrationary Imaginaries Dark Times: Arendt’s Legacies in Cultural Theory and Practice Cinema and the Concentrationary Imaginary Identifying Sites of Cruelty Agamben and the Camp

To submit an abstract for a 20 minute paper download form and send directly to: conmem@leeds.ac.uk marked Concentrationary Imaginaries Conference 2011.

Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 1 November 2010. CentreCATH School of Fine Art, Old Mining Building, University of Leeds
E-mail: conmem@leeds.ac.uk

New book: Memory and Migration: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memory Studies

For more information see here 

International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence

18-20 March 2011, Fatih University, Istanbul

Praxis Club was founded in 2006 as an initiative of the Department of Sociology of Fatih University, which aims to adopt an active role in fostering sociological knowledge and imagination in Turkey with a commitment to inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural research.

In addition to fieldwork conducted by the members of Praxis, with particular focus on Central Asia besides Turkey, Praxis hosted a series of conferences since 2006. Since then, Praxis has also brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and policy-makers in its National Sociology Congresses, the third of which was organized in May 2010. With the 1st International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence that is to be organized after the three nationwide conferences, it is aimed to improve inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural researches on cultural memory, with particular focus on the potential of developing common meanings and understandings.

Call for Papers

Literature on cultural memory has extensively developed in the last two decades. Several scholarly works and conferences have been dedicated to it. The "new wars" (M. Kaldor, *New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era*), as well as the current global paradigms drawing on the language of clash have particularly reflected a strong link between cultural memory and conflict. In opposition to the conventional thinking, this conference aims to raise the fundamental question of how individual and collective memories (M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory) can generate intercultural dialogue practices and therefore used as tools for conflict resolution. We especially aim to generate research on how to develop shared meanings and common understanding at the level of ordinary people belonging to different cultural and ethno-religious communities, therefore reproduce everyday cosmopolitanism. Some of the fundamental questions that will be addressed in the conference are:

1. How is cosmopolitanism experienced in everyday life and urban spaces by members of different social groups?
2. Which are the ways in which memories of conflict and collaboration are transmitted?
3. In what ways coexistence is represented in members` and their communities` symbolic domains?
4. Which are the instruments and roles played in these transmission processes? (first-hand memoirs and narratives; historiography and historians; spatial designs and architects; novels; cinema etc.) 5. What are the ways of the construction and reconstruction of gendered memories?
6. How the sites of memory, i.e. visual history and museums, and imaginary topograhies function to shape the discourses of conflict vis-à-vis experiences of coexistence and collaboration?
7. What kinds of interactions or tensions are experienced between public and private memories?
8. How do remembering and forgetting/amnesia function in justifying the present and constructing the the future?
9. How can the past be dealed through examples of the good?
10. How can narratives and oral heritage be developed as a tool for understanding and overcoming conflictual issues?
11. How can the constructive experiences be adopted as shared models for the (re)building of coexistence and inter-communal trust?
12. What can be the impacts of local experiences on identity-formation at the regional and global level?

We welcome proposals from senior as well as junior researchers from all disciplines concerned with these debates and issues including Anthropology, Architecture, Art History, World Literature, Fine Art, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology and Theology. The main objective of the conference is to generate research and understanding of how individual and cultural memories could facilitate a shared meaning and common understanding vis-à-vis the discourses of clash, i.e. civilizations, religions, and ethnic groups.

In addition to the thematic panels, the conference will host photography exhibitions and book panels as well as film presentations on cultural memory.

300-word paper abstracts with a 200-word bio should be sent by 1 October 2010 to Ali Murat Yel (e-mail:muratyel@gmail.com) and Onder Cetin (e-mail: o.cetin.isim@gmail.com). Selection of the papers will be made on the basis of quality and relevance to the conference themes. Selected papers will be published in a special volume in English and in Turkish.

Deadlines:
- Submission of abstracts: 1 October 2010
- Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 1 November 2010
- Submission of full papers: 1 January 2011

Call for Papers: International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST): Media History and Cultural Memory

University of Copenhagen, July 6-9, 2011

The International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) is pleased to announce its XXIV biennial conference, ' on the theme of Media History and Cultural Memory, to be held at Copenhagen University 6-9 July 6 2011. The conference  will look at the ways in which media history is interwoven with the concept of cultural memory. Media such as radio, television, film, and the internet are used to create, represent, transmit, revise, and preserve collective constructions  of history and identity.  Media hold complex and evolving roles in the ways that individuals and groups understand the  moments and events of their pasts, at all levels of social organization (local, regional, national, transnational).   These understandings inform policy, politics, and the performance of identity, laying the foundation for future  interpretations and understandings, and carrying past and present affiliations, conflicts, glory, and trauma forward in time.

The conference will be organized around the following five subthemes.  Proposals should include an indication of relevant subthemes to aid in the creation of panels.

Documenting and representing the past

-  Archives and the politics of memory (selection, preservation, digitization, valorisation)

-  Digital archives as/and memory

-  History and/on TV / Film / Radio/ Video Games and other new media

-  Museums and the politics of memory

-  Heritage and preservation

Identity and Memory

-  Individual / collective

-  Regional / National / Transnational / Imperial and Colonial identity

-  Religious memory

-  Remembering progress / change

-  Cohesion / Unification

Memories of Eras of Transition

-  Cultural transitions

-  Economic transitions

-  Ideological transitions

-  Political transitions

-  Geographical transitions

Memory and Collective Trauma

-  Media, collective trauma and the shaping of memories: media representations of genocide, wars, disasters, repression/oppression, dictatorial regimes...)

-  Memory and 9/11

-  Media and prosthetic memory

-  Media and post-memory

Memory and commemoration

-  Religion, identity and the (de)construction of memory

-  Cultural diplomacy and identity branding

Proposals and inquiries should be directed to Karsten Fledelius at iamhist2011@gmail.com. The deadline for  submissions is December 1, 2010. This conference is being organized by IAMHIST, in conjunction with the University of Copenhagen faculties of Humanities and Theology and The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence

18-20 March 2011, Fatih University, Istanbul

Praxis Club was founded in 2006 as an initiative of the Department of Sociology of Fatih University, which aims to adopt an active role in fostering sociological knowledge and imagination in Turkey with a commitment to inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural research.

In addition to fieldwork conducted by the members of Praxis, with particular focus on Central Asia besides Turkey, Praxis hosted a series of conferences since 2006. Since then, Praxis has also brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and policy-makers in its National Sociology Congresses, the third of which was organized in May 2010. With the 1st International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence that is to be organized after the three nationwide conferences, it is aimed to improve inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural researches on cultural memory, with particular focus on the potential of developing common meanings and understandings.

Call for Papers

Literature on cultural memory has extensively developed in the last two decades. Several scholarly works and conferences have been dedicated to it. The "new wars" (M. Kaldor, *New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era*), as well as the current global paradigms drawing on the language of clash have particularly reflected a strong link between cultural memory and conflict. In opposition to the conventional thinking, this conference aims to raise the fundamental question of how individual and collective memories (M. Halbwachs, *On Collective Memory*) can generate intercultural dialogue practices and therefore used as tools for conflict resolution. We especially aim to generate research on how to develop shared meanings and common understanding at the level of ordinary people belonging to different cultural and ethno-religious communities, therefore reproduce everyday cosmopolitanism. Some of the fundamental questions that will be addressed in the conference are:

1. How is cosmopolitanism experienced in everyday life and urban spaces by members of different social groups?
2. Which are the ways in which memories of conflict and collaboration are transmitted?
3. In what ways coexistence is represented in members` and their communities` symbolic domains?
4. Which are the instruments and roles played in these transmission processes? (first-hand memoirs and narratives; historiography and historians; spatial designs and architects; novels; cinema etc.)
5. What are the ways of the construction and reconstruction of gendered memories?
6. How the sites of memory, i.e. visual history and museums, and imaginary topograhies function to shape the discourses of conflict vis-à-vis experiences of coexistence and collaboration?
7. What kinds of interactions or tensions are experienced between public and private memories?
8. How do remembering and forgetting/amnesia function in justifying the present and constructing the the future?
9. How can the past be dealed through examples of the good?
10. How can narratives and oral heritage be developed as a tool for understanding and overcoming conflictual issues?
11. How can the constructive experiences be adopted as shared models for the (re)building of coexistence and inter-communal trust?
12. What can be the impacts of local experiences on identity-formation at the regional and global level?

We welcome proposals from senior as well as junior researchers from all disciplines concerned with these debates and issues including Anthropology, Architecture, Art History, World Literature, Fine Art, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology and Theology. The main objective of the conference is to generate research and understanding of how individual and cultural memories could facilitate a shared meaning and common understanding vis-à-vis the discourses of clash, i.e. civilizations, religions, and ethnic groups.

In addition to the thematic panels, the conference will host photography exhibitions and book panels as well as film presentations on cultural memory.

300-word paper abstracts with a 200-word bio should be sent by 1 October 2010 to Ali Murat Yel (e-mail: muratyel@gmail.comc) and Onder Cetin (e-mail:o.cetin.isim@gmail.come). Selection of the papers will be made on the basis of quality and relevance to the conference themes. Selected papers will be published in a special volume in English and in Turkish.

Deadlines:

- Submission of abstracts: 1 October 2010
- Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 1 November 2010
- Submission of full papers: 1 January 2011

1st Global Conference
Trauma - Theory and Practice

Monday 14th March – Wednesday 16th March 2011, Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Papers

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to examine and explore issues surrounding individual and collective trauma, both in terms of practice, theory and lived reality. Trauma studies have emerged from its foundation in psychoanalysis to be a dominant methodology for understanding contemporary events and our reactions to them. Critics have argued that we live in a “culture of trauma”. Repeated images of suffering and death form our collective and/or cultural unconscious. This inaugural conference seeks in particular to explore the relation between trauma, memory and identity, both national and collective.

In addition to academic analysis, we welcome the submission of case studies or other approaches from those involved with its practice, such as people in the medical profession and therapists, victims of events which have resulted in traumas on either an individual or mass scale, journalists or authors of fiction whose work deals with trauma.

For further details about the conference please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/trauma/call-for-papers/

International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence, 18-20 March 2011, Fatih University, Istanbul

Prax·is Club was founded in 2006 as an initiative of the Department of Sociology of Fatih University, which aims to adopt an active role in fostering sociological knowledge and imagination in Turkey with a commitment to inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural research.

In addition to fieldworks conducted by the members of Prax·is, with particular focus on Central Asia besides Turkey, Prax·is hosted a series of conferences since 2006. Since then, Prax·is has also brought together an
interdisciplinary group of scholars and policy-makers in its National Sociology Congresses, the third of which was organized in May 2010. With the “1st International Praxis Conference on Cultural Memory and Coexistence” that is to be organized after the three nationwide conferences, it is aimed to improve inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural researches on cultural memory, with particular focus on the potential of developing common meanings and understandings.

Call for Papers

Literature on cultural memory has extensively developed in the last two decades. Several scholarly works and conferences have been dedicated to it. The “new wars” (M. Kaldor, *New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era*), as well as the current global paradigms drawing on the language of clash have particularly reflected a strong link between cultural memory and conflict. In opposition to the conventional thinking, this conference aims to raise the fundamental question of how individual and collective memories (M. Halbwachs, *On Collective Memory*) can generate intercultural dialogue practices and therefore used as tools for conflict resolution. We especially aim to generate research on how to develop shared meanings and common understanding at the level of ordinary people belonging to different cultural and ethno-religious communities, therefore reproduce everyday cosmopolitanism. Some of the fundamental questions that will be addressed in the conference are:

  1. How is cosmopolitanism experienced in everyday life and urban spaces by members of different social groups?
  2. Which are the ways in which memories of conflict and collaboration are transmitted?
  3. In what ways coexistence is represented in members` and their communities` symbolic domains?
  4. Which are the instruments and roles played in these transmission processes? (first-hand memoirs and narratives; historiography and historians; spatial designs and architects; novels; cinema etc.)
  5. What are the ways of the construction and reconstruction of gendered memories?
  6. How the sites of memory, i.e. visual history and museums, and imaginary topograhies function to shape the discourses of conflict vis-à-vis
  experiences of coexistence and collaboration?
  7. What kinds of interactions or tensions are experienced between public and private memories?
  8. How do remembering and forgetting/amnesia function in justifying the present and constructing the the future?
  9. How can the past be dealed through examples of the good?
  10. How can narratives and oral heritage be developed as a tool for understanding and overcoming conflictual issues?
  11. How can the constructive experiences be adopted as shared models for the (re)building of coexistence and inter-communal trust?
  12. What can be the impacts of local experiences on identity-formation at the regional and global level?

We welcome proposals from senior as well as junior researchers from all disciplines concerned with these debates and issues including Anthropology, Architecture, Art History, World Literature, Fine Art, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology and Theology. The main objective of the conference is to generate research and understanding of how individual and cultural memories could facilitate a shared meaning and common understanding vis-à-vis the discourses of clash, i.e. civilizations, religions, and ethnic groups.

In addition to the thematic panels, the conference will host photography exhibitions and book panels as well as film presentations on cultural memory.

300-word paper abstracts with a 200-word bio should be sent by 1 October 2010 to Ali Murat Yel (e-mail: muratyel@gmail.com) and Onder Cetin (e-mail: o.cetin.isim@gmail.com). Selection of the papers will be made on the basis of quality and relevance to the conference themes. Selected papers will be published in a special volume in English and in Turkish.

Deadlines:

- Submission of abstracts: 1 October 2010
  - Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 1 November 2010
  - Submission of full papers: 1 January 2011

Memory and Collective Identity in Comparative Literature and Others
Call for Papers Date:   2010-11-09

Memory has lately become a central concern in contemporary culture and politics of all societies in a global scale. This “memory boom”, originated in socio-historical, political, cultural, technological and market-oriented reasons, is articulated around a certain “memory industry”, which in turn generates identity discourses. Cultural products play a fundamental role in the formation and consolidation of these discourses.

On the one hand, the rehabilitation of the memory of wars, dictatorships, killings and genocides tries to rescue from oblivion a traumatic past. There is also a willingness of discursive democratization (represented by the promotion of testimonial literature), looking to break through that version of history written by the winning side. Also, the need to look towards the past as a means of understanding the present is often emphasized, to increase the new generations’ awareness of the need to avoid the repetition of the same atrocities. Therefore, new historiographic methodologies have vindicated the incorporation of new and different perspectives that had traditionally been excluded from the construction of discourses.

Nevertheless, the notion of discursive elaboration of memories, together with the fact that discourses about the past are always filtered by the interests and beliefs of the present, make it necessary for this new historiography to be constantly under scrutiny by a critical analysis. This would reveal possible “abuses of memory” (term coined by Todorov in the text with the same title) denounced by many authors, politicians, journalists and human rights activists. It is particularly interesting as well as complex to work on the relationship that can be established between the constant re-writing of the past and the construction of collective identities. As Halbwachs explains, collective memory puts together the past and the present, as well as the individual and the social group. It is in this sense that we are also interested in the different discursive strategies that several authors have developed to reconstruct their memories from a subjective vision of the present. This also allows us to establish a link between certain forms of narration and the different underlying ideological intentions. One of the characteristics that make memory studies difficult is the specificity of each political vindication, and also their fluctuating character in relation to present-day socio-political factors. However, at the same time, in a global world of linked identities and politics, “different discourses on historical memory are intertwined and overlap each other all throughout the world, trespassing frontiers and bouncing against each other, sometimes hiding and forgetting their own historical memory, sometimes reinforcing it", as claimed by Huyssen in an interview for Metropolis magazine.

Taking as starting point, then, the fact that the restoration of the past is subject to the ideologies of the present; and also that memory studies are not only a tool for analysis, but also for the transformation of contemporary contexts, we want to vindicate a critical role that can distinguish between the "obligation of memory” (which introduces an ethical evaluation of its own look towards the past, as pointed out by Lozano Aguilar in Decir, contar, pensar la guerra), and the possible political abuses that derivate from these vindications. We also believe that a fundamental role of criticism is to suggest, as long as it is possible, new strategies to go beyond militaristic discourses. We propose therefore the following lines of research for this monographic issue:

a. –Relations between cultural production, memory discourses and the construction of collective identities.
b. –Studies on testimonial literature. Relations between individual and collective memory.
c. –The fluctuant nature of identity: transformation of the perspective of memory according to the social-historical context.
d. –Relations between narrative strategies and the ideology of memories.
e. –Analysis of the political capitalization of cultural productions on memory.
f. –Strategies to overcome memory discourses.
g. –Memory discourses as trans-border political discourses. Analysis, through cultural products, of the influence of different discourses on different geographical areas.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Edifici d'estudiants – Edifici R.
Campus Bellaterra – Barcelona.08193
Email: redaccion@452f.com
Visit the website at http://www.452f.com

Gender and Memory in European Literature, Film and Visual Art, 30 September and 1 October

Birkbeck College, University of London. Conference venue: 30 September Room G01, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD; 1 October Room MAL 541, Main Building, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London,
WC1E 7HX

This conference will set out to explore relationships between gender and memory as they have been articulated in literature and film within a European context since the 18th century. Key questions to be examined will include:

Are ways of relating to the past gendered? To what extent are different roles assigned to men and women within memory discourses? Who remembers and who is (not) remembered? Does the divide between public memory and private memory have a gender dimension? Are communicative memory and cultural memory (differently) gendered? To what extent are different memory genres/media (autobiography, novel/fiction, film) gendered? Do different memory concepts (mourning, nostalgia, memorialisation) have gendered connotations? In what ways are the relationship of men and women to memory and its discourses historically and culturally contingent? Can remembering and forgetting have gender political dimensions? To whose memories are value assigned in different cultural/historical contexts? What kinds of (gendered) memory community have been established? Who owns memory?

In order that these questions can be explored in inter- and cross-disciplinary fashion, the conference will seek to bring together scholars working on memory and gender in a variety of different fields, including English and Humanities, Modern Languages, Media and Film Studies.

For the programme and other information see

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/brrkc/events.html

Spring school 2011: Global History: Connected Histories or a History of Connections? London, 11-14 April 2011

Organisers:
• Antje Flüchter, Roland Wenzlhuemer (Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, Heidelberg University)
• Ulf Engel (Graduate School “Critical Junctures of Globalization”, Research Academy, University of Leipzig)
• Matthias Middell (Global and European Studies Institute, University of Leipzig)
• Katja Naumann (Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas (GWZO), University of Leipzig)
• Andreas Gestrich, Silke Strickrodt (German Historical Institute London)

Applications are invited for the spring school “Global History: Connected Histories or a History of Connections?” that will take place in London from 11-14 April 2011. The spring school is jointly
organized by Heidelberg University, the University of Leipzig and the German Historical Institute London. The school cooperates with the
Third European Congress on World and Global History hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science and provides an ideal introduction to the main congress theme of connections and comparisons. In recent years, Global History has firmly established itself as a new and highly productive field of historical research.

An allegedly ephemeral historiographical fashion has proved to be a well-grounded and well-respected research perspective. And yet the question of what Global History actually is and what its practitioners ought to research and teach is still hotly debated. The often confusing multitude of differing opinions on this question can at times be hard to come to terms with – especially for researchers at the start of their careers. Therefore, the organisers think it desirable to discuss some of the aspects of this problem in the form of a spring school to be held in close temporal and spatial proximity to the Third European Congress on World and Global History. Referring to the overall congress theme of Connections and Comparisons, the spring school has the title Global History: Connected Histories or a History of Connections? and will focus on two distinct approaches to Global History that particularly illustrate the differing presuppositions and intended insights informing research in the field. It is one of the distinct traits of Global History not to accept the presupposition of self-contained, autonomous cultures, societies or nations as principal units of investigation. Hence, terms and concepts such as connections, connecting or connectedness are close to the core of almost every historical study in the field. And still the concept of connections can be operationalised in very different ways reflecting the different
possible approaches to the purpose of Global History. The first approach that we have chosen to call connected histories builds on the presupposition of globality, of global entanglements, that provide the context for the historical processes under scrutiny. No matter if one, two or more cultures or societies are looked at, they must always be treated and assessed as connected and entangled with others. But as important as they may be, the connections
themselves merely form the background, the context of the analysis, while the people, things and entities connected stand in the focus of
research. In this way, statehood or state building – to name but one example – are examined as embedded in global spaces of communication
and interaction rather than as principally endogenous and autonomous processes.
The history of connections-approach, on the other hand, primarily looks at the emergence and functioning of globality by way of global
connections. Here, the connections themselves constitute the object of research, while that which has been connected mainly provides the
research context. This research approach often leaves traditional understandings of space behind and focuses on the rationale and the local impact of the emerging global sphere. The study of the emergence of a global telegraph network and its transformative impact on global spaces of communication and interaction can serve as an illustrative example here. The history of connections-approach focuses on distinct topics and subjects that have had a formative impact on our global(ised) world and whose analysis helps to explain and understand current problems of
(and in) globalisation. The connected histories-approach allows the researcher to throw new light on established topics that have previously been viewed exclusively in the context of the nation state or other self-contained entities and to carry a global and exchange-oriented perspective into this field.

Of course, none of the two approaches is better, faster, more useful or, indeed, “more Global History” than the other. Rather they reflect
the research questions and desired insights of the historian. The spring school seeks to highlight both the differences and the similarities between the two approaches and also aims at exemplifying
the connection between the historian’s questions and the chosen perspective on Global History. It wants to provide PhD students in the field of Global History with an opportunity to study these concepts. This will encompass in-depth discussion with renowned experts in the field, the reading and interpreting of key texts together as well as the presentation and discussion of the participants’ own research projects in the light of the spring school’s principal questions.

Applications for participation in the spring school should be in English and contain a letter of motivation, an outline of the research project to be presented (1.000-1.500 words) and two letters of
reference. They must be sent electronically to Antje Flüchter (fluechter@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de) by 31 August 2010.

Successful applicants will be required to present their projects at the spring school (in German, English or French). The fee for participation is 85 Euro. A limited number of scholarships will be
available for participants from less-privileged backgrounds and need to be applied for separately.

Dr. Antje Flüchter
Karl Jaspers Centre
Vossstr. 2
D-69115 Heidelberg
Germany
Email: fluechter@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de

Australasian Association for Communist and Post-Communist Studies (AACaPS) Tenth Biennial Conference (2011)

February 3-4, 2011, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

The Australasian Association for Communist and Post-Communist Studies invites proposals for panels and papers for the 10th Biennial
Conference to be held at the ANU in Canberra on 3-4 February 2011. The event will be hosted by the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia), College of Arts and Social Sciences.

The Conference theme is ?Two Decades without the Soviet Union: Transformations in Eurasian Space?.

Proposals for panels and paper topics relating to all aspects of scholarship in the social sciences and humanities which explore trajectories of change in the former USSR and the Eastern Bloc will be welcome. Existing panels, their themes and chairpersons are listed below:

- Market reforms in the former Soviet Union (Chair: Stephen Fortescue, UNSW)
- Russian foreign policy in the Near Abroad (Chair: Roderic Pitty, UWA)
- Cultural and educational aspects of transformation (Chair: Kevin Windle, ANU)
- Nationalism and politics of identity in Central Asia (Chair: Kirill Nourzhanov, ANU)

Submission of Proposals

FOR PAPER PRESENTERS: 1) name, 2) current institutional affiliation, 3) title/position, 4) e-mail address, 5) postal address, 6) telephone
number, 7) fax number, 8) title of paper, 9) abstract of paper (200 words or less), 10) any audio-visual equipment required (specify:
overhead projector, slide projector, DVD/video player), 11) a brief CV containing information for panel chairperson's introduction.

FOR PANELS:  In addition to the information for paper presenters (see above), the following are also required: 1) title for proposed panel, 2) name, affiliation and contact information of the panel chair and discussants.

Deadlines: for proposed panels, 31 August 2010; for papers, 29 October 2010.

Publication of Proceedings

Select papers presented at the conference will be published either in an edited volume or in a peer-reviewed Web-based collection. Detailed
information about an editorial board and guidelines for submitting a complete paper will be added soon.

Important dates:

- abstract acceptance notification issued 5 November 2010
- final copy of the paper submitted 11 January 2011

Conference Registration Fees

- AACaPS full members A$50
- Non-members A$80
- Full-time students and other concessional A$50

Funding

AACaPS does not have funds to support the costs of conference participation.  Participants should obtain their own funding.

AACaPS website:  sites.google.com/site/aacpssite/

Conference Information and Registration

The conference website is http://cais.anu.edu.au/aacaps2011

Contacts

Conference-related correspondence should be addressed to the
conference convenor:

Dr Kirill Nourzhanov
CAIS
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
Australia
Tel. 61 2 6125 8374
Fax 61 2 6125 5410
E-mail  kirill.nourzhanov@anu.edu.au

Call for Papers: Forms and Functions of Social Memories -- Perspectives from Social and Cultural Sciences

University of Erlangen, 10-12 December 2010

Call for Papers Date: 2010-09-30

The conference "Forms and Functions of Social Memories -- Perspectives from Social and Cultural Sciences" takes place at the Institute for Sociology of the University of Erlangen. It starts at December 10th and ends December 12th around noon. It is planned as a mixture between plenary and panel sessions.

Please send a 500 words proposal for a 30 min. paper by September 30th, 2010 to: info@soziale-erinnerung.de. The acceptances will be sent at the end of october. For further information have a look at http://www.soziale-erinnerung.de.

The conference aims at collecting and re-considering the manifold empirical research on social memories on behalf of their theoretical potential. It is an astonishing fact, that despite of a lot of research in social and cultural sciences on social memories there are rather few comprehensive theoretical considerations. Therefore, we want to set the focus on the integration of different theoretical approaches and empirical research.

In the self-definition of modernity multiple social memories take the place of the "Great Narrative" on different levels that don't have to be compatible. A theory of social memories faces the problem of integrating social dynamics, cultural pluralisation and processes of social differentiation without ignoring contexts of interactions like families or milieus. However, the circulating terms and definitions of forms of social memories should not just be placed side by side. Instead we want to focus, empirically and theoretically, on the processes of formation and constitution that underlie these conceptualizations to work out both lines of conflict and potentials of integration.

The conference would like to discuss theoretical concepts and empirical studies concerning social memories in an interdisciplinary framework. Based on these discussions we would like to ask for theoretical enhancements. From performative acts to narrative situations of interaction or discourse, constructions and representations of the past should be observed in conjunction with problems like oblivion, authenticity, factuality and validity or breaches in the transmission of the past. On the one hand the future directedness of social memories in form of again and again constituted horizons of expectations should be clarified. On the other hand it is deemed to analyse social memories in their function as mechanisms of "Transmission" regarding the specific selectivities that evolve at the intersections (of persons, groups, generations, discourses, etc.) and that constitute the specific relationship between remembrance and oblivion. According to this, the definition of the particular functionality of memories for the processes of social and individual formation of meaning is important, on both counts biographically and systemically.

Of equal importance is the reflection of institutionalised remembrance and of the own position of a speaker: Scientists are directly or indirectly involved in the practice of (institutionalised) remembrance and therefore are facing the challenge of concerning themselves with its contexts, conditions, (political) purpose and the implicit ideologies.

We have invited the following speakers: Paul Connerton (Oxford/UK), Elena Esposito (Modena/Reggio Emilia/ Italy), Mary Fulbrook (London/UK), Jeffrey K. Olick (Virginia/USA), Gabriele Rosenthal (Goettingen/Germany), Joanna Tokarska-Bakir (Warsaw/Poland), Christian Gudehus (Essen/Germany)

Topics include:

· Individual -- Interaction -- Society: boundaries and transitions between the different forms of memories.
· Metaphors, terms and forms of social memories and their conditions of formation
· Influence of social differentiation on social remembrance (generations, classes, cultural pluralisation, gender, etc.)
· Transformation of social memories (interdependency of social transformationsprocesses and social memories)
· Facticity, authenticity and the realm of experience
· Media, discourse and their functions for remembrance
· Re-presentations of the past (body memory, rituals, sites of remembrance, etc.)
· Social and individual practices of remembrance
· Transgenerational transmission and breaches of tradition
· Remembrance and oblivion between institution, power and ideology

The conference languages will be English and German. The presentations are intended to be published in a special volume of a sociological journal after the conference.

Memory, Mediation, Remediation: An International Conference on Memory in Literature and Film

April 28-30 2011, Wilfred Laurier University

Memory Studies has recently been established as one of the most urgent contemporary interdisciplinary fields.Wilfrid Laurier University’s Department of English and Film Studies is hosting an international conference on the theme of “Memory, Mediation, Remediation” as part of the university’s 100^th year celebration. The conference examines not merely the representation and redefining of memory (and history, and nostalgia, etc.) in both literary and filmic texts, but also the question of the degree to which either individual or social memory gets constituted, legitimized and ‘naturalized’ through narrative or visual media forms. Ultimately, this conference hopes to provide a venue for the exploration of literature and cinema as themselves veritable modes of memory, in the shape of allusion, adaptation, remediation, translation, intertextuality, and appropriation.

Today, the word ‘memory’ acts as a catch-all for: (a) the process of recollection or retrieval; (b) the form or ‘place’ in which memory-content is both stored and lost (the archive); and (c) the mnemic content itself, what is commonly referred to as a ‘memory’. This imprecision is exacerbated by the confusion and conflation of personal ‘natural’ memory and forms of collective ‘cultural memory’ which as often as not is another way of talking about ‘history.’ Modern theorists of memory recognize that in speaking of memory one is describing not a unitary subjective phenomenon but a grouping of cognitive functions – or, in terms more amenable to this conference, a constellation of interconnected metaphors. These metaphors continue to be both familiar and powerful, most notably in terms of modernity’s stubborn insistence on memory’s spatial nature.

This conference seeks to extend the exploration of received modes and theories of the representation of memory to a consideration of 21^st century globalized values and ideas. ‘Collective,’ ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ memory are not new ideas, but we would encourage exploration what it means to think of "culture" itself as a global memory system; as both source of and storehouse for a society’s most cherished values, ideals, and ideologies.

Please send a 500 word proposal and a one-page cv by August 16, 2010 to:

Russ Kilbourn or Eleanor Ty

Department of English and Film Studies

Wilfrid Laurier University

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5

rkilbourn@wlu.ca or ety@wlu.ca

www.wlu.ca/arts/film/memory2011

Featured Speakers include:

Marlene Kadar, York University

Co-editor of Photographs, Histories, Meanings (Palgrave 2009) and Tracing the Autobiographical (Life Writing) (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2005)

Alison Landsberg, George Mason University

Author of Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (Columbia University Press 2004)

Sarah Henstra, Ryerson University

Author of The Counter-Memorial Impulse in Twentieth Century English Fiction (Palgrave 2009)

The (Re)use and Interpretation of Research Materials, Helsinki, 2–3 December 2010

Papers are invited for contributions to the Oral History and Fieldwork – The (Re)use and Interpretation of Research Materials symposium hosted by the Finnish Literature Society in collaboration with the Finnish Oral History Network (FOHN) and The Academy of Finland project Strangers from the East – Narratives of Karelian Exiles and Re-immigrants from Russia Regarding their Integration in Finland 2009-2012 (lead by Dr. Outi Fingerroos).

The event will be the third international symposium organized by the Finnish Oral History Network. We aim to stimulate discussion and bring together scholars interested in fieldwork methodology within oral history research. The symposium will offer a discussion forum for researchers working in the field. The keynote speakers are Molly Andrews (University of East London, United Kingdom) and Selma Leydesdorff (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Fieldwork methodology has been discussed in oral history research since the late 1970s when the oral history interview was reconceptualized as a dialogically constructed text. The oral history interview was seen as a dialogical process in which both participants – the interviewee and the interviewer – took part, and the reflection of the research process has become self-evident. Methodological issues initially identified concerned the conduct, processing, and preservation of oral history materials. Subsequently the concept of field has been elaborated and is now used to refer to archived research materials, e.g. oral history interviews, written autobiographies, questionnaires and photographs, and their later use.

In recent years the focus of fieldwork methodology has turned to the secondary analysis of oral history materials, in other words the use and reuse of archived oral history and life-history materials.Methodological, ethical and theoretical issues have to be considered at all stages of research. The research process grows even more demanding when the researcher uses multiple sources and types of research material instead of keeping to one primary research material. Does this only cause problems and flaws as some have suggested? How have researchers tackled methodological and practical challenges related to the reuse of research materials? Can all research materials be reused and for what kind of research purposes?

We welcome scholars working within the field of oral and life history. Proposals may be submitted for individual papers or workshop sessions. The programme will include keynote lectures, paper sessions and a final panel. The principal conference language will be English.

Participants of workshops are invited to send abstracts to the organizers. Workshop paper proposals should include a title and a maximum 250 word abstract. Please send us a single page proposal including the title of the presentation, the abstract and the following information:
- name (with your surname in CAPITAL letters)
- affiliation
- postal address
- e-mail address
- telephone and fax numbers

Proposals will be evaluated according to their focus on the topic.Proposals must be written in English. Please e-mail your proposal as an e-mail attachment by 22 May 2010 to fohn@finlit.fi. The acceptance or rejection of proposals will be announced by 30 June 2010. The deadline for the papers is 30 October 2010.

The admission to the symposium is 35€.

Enquiries: fohn@finlit.fi

Book review: Buchinger, Kristin; Gantet, Claire; Vogel, Jakob (Hrsg.): Europäische
Erinnerungsräume.

Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-593-38865-6; 311 S.; EUR 34,90.

Reviewed by Claudia Baumann, Leipzig

The review can be read here

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