Events and Conferences
Upcoming Events/2013
January 2013
Representing the Irrepresentable: Narratives and Visual Images of Slavery, Forced Labor, and Genocide.127th American Historical Association Meeting
3-6 January 2013: New Orleans (USA)
This workshop will gather scholars working on written narratives (documents, autobiographies, personal journals, novels, etc.) and visual images (painting, drawings, photographs, engravings, movies, etc.) dealing with forced displacement, enslavement, slavery, forced labor, war, and genocide.
Contact: aaraujo@howard.edu
February 2013
Zwangsarbeit für das Deutsche Reich 1941-1945. Praxis und Erinnerung in deutschen und russischen
January 9 – March 8, 2013: Warsaw, Poland
Von 9. Januar bis 8. März 2013 präsentiert die Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora im Warschauer Königsschloss die internationale Wanderausstellung “Zwangsarbeit. Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg”. Die unter Schirmherrschaft des polnischen und des deutschen Präsidenten stehende Ausstellung geht auf eine Initiative der Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” (EVZ) zurück und wurde von ihr gefördert.
Begleitend zur Ausstellung veranstalten die Universitäten Warschau und Breslau sowie die Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora am 10. Januar in Warschau eine wissenschaftliche Tagung zum Thema “Zwangsarbeit für das Deutsche Reich 1939 bis 1945. Praxis und Erinnerung in polnischen und deutschen Perspektiven.”
Ziel der Tagung ist eine Standortbestimmung der polnischen und deutschen Forschung zur NS-Zwangsarbeit. Zudem wird nach der Stellung des Themas Zwangsarbeit in den kollektiven Gedächtnissen beider Länder gefragt. In erfahrungsgeschichtlicher Perspektive soll dabei auch die Erinnerung der ehemaligen Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeiter selbst hinterfragt werden. Schließlich widmet sich die Tagung der bis heute teils ungelösten Frage der Entschädigung.
Den Abschluss der Tagung bildet eine Podiumsdiskussion im Königsschloss Warschau zum Thema “Was haben die Auszahlungen der Stiftung EVZ an ehemalige Zwangsarbeiter bewirkt?”
Die Tagung wird im Historischen Institut der Universität Warschau (Sala Kolumnowa, Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28) und im Königsschloss Warschau (Kinosaal, plac Zamkowy 4) stattfinden. Tagungssprachen sind Polnisch und Deutsch. Die Teilnahme ist kostenfrei.
New Perspectives On The 1965 Violence In Indonesia
11-13 February 2013: The Australian National University, Canberra.
Nearly half a century ago, the Indonesian archipelago was riven by unprecedented massacres in which an estimated half million people died. The vast majority of the victims were members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which was blamed for an unsuccessful coup in Jakarta on the night of 30 September 1965. During the long New Order regime of President Suharto, public discussion of the killings was suppressed and those associated with the PKI continued to be persecuted. After the end of the New Order in 1998, some public discussion of the events of 1965-66 became possible, but our understanding of those terrible times is still hampered by lack of detailed information.
During the last decade, however, victim support groups, activists and researchers have been collecting evidence concerning the killings. Oral testimonies have been collected and a few significant documents have emerged. New insights into the events of 1965-66 have also come from closer examination of older evidence and from comparisons with other political genocides in the 20th century.
The workshop ‘New Perspectives on the 1965 Violence in Indonesia¹ will review this evidence and consider the insights that arise from it.
The workshop will include academic papers, summaries of research findings and discussion of the efforts already underway to create, collect and preserve documentation of this past. Presentations will be made in English or Indonesian, according to the preference of each speaker, and discussions will be in both languages.
See New Perspectives
Opfer, Täter, Jedermann? ‘DDR-Zeitzeugen’ im Spannungsfeld von Aufarbeitung, Historisierung und Geschichtsvermittlung
14-15 Februar 2013: Postdam, Deutschland
Zeitpfeil e.V.; Politischer Arbeitskreis Schulen e.V.; Bildungswerk der Humanistischen Union NRW; und Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam 14.02.2013-15.02.2013, Potsdam, Haus der Natur (Potsdam), Filmmuseum Potsdam und Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam Deadline: 15.01.2013. Zeitzeugen sind seit 1989/90 zu einer geschichtskulturellen und pädagogischen Leitfigur in der Aufarbeitung und Vermittlung der Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur geworden. Sie sind Interview- und Gesprächspartner in wissenschaftlichen Projekten und Tagungen, treten in verschiedenen Rollen in Veranstaltungen und Projekten im Rahmen der schulischen und außerschulischen Bildung auf, führen durch Gedenkstätten und werden in Ausstellungen präsentiert. Es existieren Erinnerungsportale im Internet und Zeitzeugenbörsen, die den passenden Zeitzeugen für unterschiedliche “Einsatzzwecke” vermitteln. Zeitzeugen erfüllen verschiedene Funktionen: Im Rahmen der Oral History ergänzen ihre Aussagen herkömmliche Quellen. In Vermittlungsprozesse werden sie aufgrund des persönlichen und “authentischen” Zugriffs auf Geschichte eingebunden und stoßen bei den Rezipient/-innen auf sehr große Resonanz. Die Arbeit mit Zeitzeugen zur DDR- und (deutsch)-deutschen Geschichte beinhaltet andere Voraussetzungen, Potenziale und Probleme als die bisher als Folie zugrundegelegte NS-Zeitzeugenschaft. In der Bildungspraxis sind dabei methodische Probleme und Herausforderungen zu beachten, die sich nicht zuletzt in kontroversen Debatten um “emotionale Überwältigung” und “Multiperspektivität” niederschlagen. Auf der Tagung werden wissenschaftliche, didaktische und künstlerische Perspektiven auf die Arbeit mit Zeitzeugen gekreuzt und in Workshops und Projektvorstellungen Möglichkeiten zu Austausch, Vernetzung und Fortbildung geboten. Die Veranstaltung wird im Rahmen des von der Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur unterstützten Projekts “Arbeit mit Zeitzeugen zur DDR-Geschichte” von der Brandenburgischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung und der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung gefördert.
Kontakt: Susanne Schäffner
March 2013
Digital Memories, 5th Global Conference
13-15 March 2013: Lisbon, Portugal
This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine, explore and critically engage with the issues and implications created by the massive exploitation of digital technologies for inter-human communication and examine how online users form, archive and de-/code their memories in cybermedia environments, and how the systems used for production influence the way the users perceive and work with the memory. In particular the conference will encourage equally theoretical and practical debates which surround the cultural contexts of memory co-/production, re-/mediation, en-/decoding, dissemination, personal/mass interpretation and preservation.
See Digital Memories
Trauma: Theory and Practice
19-22 March 2013: Lisbon, Portugal
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 has 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. The third global conference seeks papers on a variety of issues related to trauma including: the function of memory, memorial, and testimony; collective and cultural perspectives; the impact of time; and the management of personal and political traumas.
See Trauma: Theory and Practice
Workshop 7: Truth Recovery for Missing Persons in Times of Transition, Mediterranean Programme: 14th Mediterranean Research Meeting
20-23 March 2013: Mersin, Turkey
A growing number of recently democratized countries are attempting to address their violent past, creating an urgent need to understand how to transform human rights issues into building blocks of reconciliation. Despite the fact that human rights have taken centre stage in the agenda of international politics, little empirical evidence has been provided to trace the precise relationship between dealing with human rights violations of the ancien régime and the prospects of peaceful democratic transition. And although enforced disappearances as a result of political violence have become an endemic feature of contemporary conflict globally, the study of the phenomenon and its relationship to transitional justice has not received much attention.
The workshop highlights the importance of comparing experiences of enforced disappearances in post-conflict and post-authoritarian settings to guide academic research and assist policy-makers dealing with similar problems.
The workshop aims to make an innovative contribution to the limited knowledge on the complex relationship between truth recovery for missing persons and peaceful democratic transitions. The primary objective of the workshop is to understand how to transform protracted human rights problems into stepping stones of reconciliation in times of transition. It also intends to elucidate the interplay between individual justice and social/political necessities of reconciliation. Participants are encouraged to submit proposals that would engage with the political, legal, social, psychological and anthropological dimensions related to truth recovery.
See Workshop 7: Truth Recovery
Memory Revisited. The Holocaust in European Art and Popular Culture in the New Millennium,
21-23 March 2013: Hugo Valentin Centre at Uppsala University, Sweden
Art and popular culture have played a crucial role in raising global awareness of the genocide of the European Jews, and have contributed to the development of a cosmopolitan memory of the historical event. In the past two decades, these media have prompted many public discussions about the future of Holocaust representation and have inevitably posed important questions about the transmission of its memory to future generations. Dealing with the question of how younger generations in Europe envisage their roles as vicarious inheritors of the Holocaust, this conference offers an opportunity to discuss artistic and pop-cultural engagements with the topic of Holocaust memorialisation, during the 1990s and the 2000s.The aim of this conference is to reach a deeper understanding on why references to the Holocaust in the visual arts and in popular culture continue to appear, what form they take, and what they can tell us about the relevance of Holocaust memory in contemporary European societies.
Contact : Tanja Schult and Diana Popescu
April 2013
Der juedische Widerstand gegen die NS-Vernichtungspolitik in Europa 1933-1945 / The Jewish resistance to the Nazi policy of extermination in Europe 1933-1945
7-9 April 2013: Berlin
This conference will reflect the different conditions, facets and forms of Jewish resistance and activities during the period of Nazi rule, occupation and extermination policies.
For more information, please contact: Prof. Dr. Julius H. Schoeps
Sixth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum
22-24 April 2013: National Art Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Now in its sixth year, the Museum Conference is a place where museum practitioners, researchers, thinkers and teachers can engage in discussion on the historic character and future shape of the museum. The key question of the conference is ‘How can the institution of the museum become more inclusive?’
See On-museums
May 2013
Aftershock. Post-Traumatic Cultures since the Great War
22 – 24 May 2013: Copenhagen, Denmark
This cross-disciplinary conference focusses on genres of post-traumatic stress as identified and studied in military and civilian psychology, social and cultural history, film studies as well as literary and art criticism. Post-trauma’s elusive, psycho-social, inter-relational complexity requires such an interdisciplinary approach to place the after-effects of recent conflicts, for instance in Iraq and Afghanistan, within the complex narratives of war-related stress from 1914 onwards. Body, mind and emotion inflected by time and locality should be explored together with the interconnected histories of individual (combat) and collective (civilian) aftershock.
See engerom.ku.dk
June 2013
Digital Testimonies on War and Trauma
12-14 June, 2013: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
To mark the completion of the video-life stories project Croatian Memories (CroMe) the Erasmus Studio for e-research (www.eur.nl/erasmusstudio)is generating a collection of video interviews with testimonies on war-related experiences in Croatia’s past. As each interview is processed, transcribed, translated and subtitled in English, the project reaches out to both a local general and an international academic audience. Accordingly the interviews will be made accessible in two ways: in edited form on an online platform for the general public, and in their original form in a separate password-protected environment for researchers.
The conference aims to bring together scholars involved in the creation of oral sources, for both individual research and archival purposes, with the intent to discuss the potential use and impact of digitized collections of narratives related to war and trauma, across disciplinary and national boundaries. Because of the specific context in which the CroMe project has been conducted, special attention will be given to research based on oral sources in the region of the former Yugoslavia, and on new insights with regard to creating and opening up digital oral history archives.
July 2013
Drei Generationen: Shoa und Nationalsozialismus im Familiengedächtnis
3 – 5 July 2013: Vienna, Austria
Die interdisziplinäre Tagung will sich der Problematik aus unterschiedlichen, historischen, psychologischen, künstlerischen, literarischen etc. Perspektiven nähern. Strategien der Verarbeitung bzw.
Verdrängungsphänomene sowohl auf gesellschaftlicher als auch auf individueller Ebene sollen dabei diskutiert werden. Von besonderem Interesse wird das Familiengedächtnis sein, das durch Kommunikation und Interaktion der einzelnen Familienmitglieder entstanden ist und somit ein dynamisches Konstrukt der Erinnerungsgemeinschaft verschiedener Generationen darstellt. Die Weitergabe der Familiengeschichte erfolgte nicht nur eindimensional von der älteren zur jüngeren Generation, sondern wurde in diesem Prozess der Auseinandersetzung und des intergenerationellen Dialogs von den jüngeren Generationen als Akteurinnen handelnd verarbeitet.
See hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin
October 2013
New Scholars/New Research on the Holocaust
October 6-7, 2013: University of Toronto
This international academic conference will showcase and consider new Holocaust-related research by new scholars in the field.
See h-net.msu.edu
Past Events
December 2012
Vom Völkermord-Tribunal wider Willen zum Internationalen Strafrecht
2 Dezember 2012: Lepsiushaus Potsdam
Die Konferenz wendet sich sowohl an Wissenschaftler, insbesondere Völkerrechtler, Historiker und Politikwissenschaftler als auch an eine breitere Öffentlichkeit. Sie soll eine Entwicklungslinie nachzeichnen, die vom Freispruch für den armenischen Attentäter bis in die Gegenwart führt.
Screen | History | Memory, Film & History Association of Australia & New Zealand Conference 2012
2-5 December 2012: Melbourne, Australia
The FHAANZ Conference invites international scholars, archivists and filmmakers to present their research in the fields of screen history, history and memory on screen, national and transnational screen histories, and the social and cultural impact of cinema, television and new media.
The Limits of Responsibility : Histories, Species, Politics, Interdisciplinary conference
3-5 December 2012: Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Responsibility is a key concept invoked in many contemporary forums, popular and academic. A wide range of discourses define the ethical and civil responsibilities of the citizen and the human subject. Notions of apology, reconciliation, reparation and collective trauma all hold citizens to be responsible for forms of violence and oppression in their personal lives and national histories – and responsive to the often challenging claims of others. Contemporary Western society and culture might now be celebrated for its responsiveness to ethical and political multiplicity. But these recent cultural ‘advances’ may also be seen as complicit – along with the technocratic state, corporate managerializm and therapeutic cultures (including mass media) – with a tendency to control and direct human relationships, emotions, memory and physical well-being. How should responsibility be understood: with respect to the limits and borders established and policed by the state and corporate capitalism, or, more benignly, by discourses of apology and reconciliation? Who or what decides on the caesura that defines the threshold between human and non-human, citizen and non-citizen, victim and terrorist, and those that are included in or excluded from public commemoration, repudiation or erasure? How can cultural criticism be responsible for, or responsive to, the articulation of these limits and borders and their social, political and historical impact?
Migration, Memory, and Place
6-7 December 2012: University of Copenhagen (6 December) Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj (7 December), Denmark
Speakers:
- Edward S. Casey (Stony Brook University)
- Andreas Huyssen (Columbia University)
- Nikos Papastergiadis (University of Melbourne)
- Alistair Thomson (Monash University, Melbourne)
- Sigrid Weigel (Technische Universität Berlin)
See The Danish Network for Cultural Memory Studies
Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence
7-8 December 2012: Budapest, Central European University
20th century has been a century of wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence. It has also been a century of feminist struggle and theorizing globally. At the peak of what is sometimes called the “memory boom,” this conference seeks to explore the different ways in which wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence are remembered through a gender lens.
Local Memory, Global Ethics, Justice: The Politics of Historical Dialogue in Contemporary Society, The Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability (AHDA) at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights
11-14 December 2012: New York City
The Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability (AHDA) at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights will hold its first annual conference in New York City, December 11-14, 2012. The conference will be co-hosted by the Guantanamo Public Memory Project, and will also feature the Guantanamo Public Memory Projects’ first traveling exhibit and digital media as a shared international challenge in historical dialogue.
Historical dialogue and accountability is a growing field of advocacy and scholarship that encompasses the efforts in conflict, post-conflict, and post-dictatorial societies to come to terms with their pasts. In contesting nationalist myths and identities, in examining official historical narratives, and opening them to competing narratives about past violence, historical dialogue provide analysis of past violence grounded in empirical research; acknowledge the victims of past violence and human rights abuses; challenge and deconstruct national, religious, or ethnic memories of heroism and/or victimhood; foster shared work between interlocutors of two or more sides of a conflict; identify and monitor how history is misused to divide society and perpetuate conflict; enhance public discussion about the past.
See http://www.hrcolumbia.org/ahda/
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