International Conference :Victim Narratives in Transnational Contexts, January 25- 27, 2018, Austria

Call For Abstracts:

The figure of the victim seems to be virtually unparalleled in its power to polarise contemporary societies. The discursively produced and judicially fixed victim status is highly desirable for individuals and groups because it accords moral superiority and guarantees legal rights and claims. Victims are considered to be essentially ‘good’; they stand on the right side of history and must receive special treatment. This desire for a victim status both at the collective and at the individual level has been cri­ti­cised by, among others, Esther Benbassa, Jean-Michel Chaumont, Peter Novick, and, most recently, Daniele Giglioli. They argue that the current ‘victim cult’ defends victims against any form of criticism and makes them virtually unassailable: Victims are perceived as objects and relieved of any commitment to individual responsibility. They are forever reduced to events in the past, which rules out any perspec­tive on viable future and renders it prac­ti­cally unnecessary. Lastly, and importantly, victims, in particular victims of war and violence in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, are always associated with the perpetrators and rarely seen as autonomous subjects.

The figure of the victim both constructs and destabilises national and regional historical narratives. These complex processes inspire international as well as transnational competition among victims and induce a revision of national cultures of memory. The reorganisation of Europe after 1989, the increasing globa­li­sa­tion of the world, and the emergence of new media technologies that facilitate the rapid gene­ration of images of victims and perpetrators alike, call for a transnational perspective on victim narra­tives.

The objective of this conference is to identify and analyse conceptualisations of ‘victimhood,’ in par­ti­cular with regard to cultural studies and memory research. It also aims at a critical discussion of vic­tim­hood/victim status in fictional texts (prose, poetry, theatre) as well as in other media (film, photography, etc.). The con­ference invites participants to discuss recent texts (post-1989) that challenge entrenched victim narratives and attempt to transcend the logic of retaliation and atonement without negating or relativising the victims’ suffering. The conference welcomes submissions from a broad range of discip­lines such as film, literary, and cultural studies, and is particularly interested in transnational and trans­cultural aspects.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• New conceptualisations of victim narratives: What could replace victim narratives?
• Victim narratives in national memory discourses and their transformation through transnational and transcultural perspectives
• A critique of self-victimisation and the subversive potential of self-victimisation
• Competition but also solidarity among victim groups and ensuing consequences
• Victim narratives and generational narratives
• Victim narratives and gender
• Victim narratives in postcolonial contexts
• Victim narratives in the context of mémoires croisées, entangled history, etc.
• The commercialisation of memory culture

The conference languages will be German and English. Please send abstracts in English or German (300–500 words) to Christof.Diem@uibk.ac.at along with a short biographical note and a list of publications by May 30^th, 2017. Presenters will be notified whether or not their abstracts have been accepted by June 30^th, 2017. Where possible, we will provide funding for travel and accommodation.

Organisation: Research Centre Cultures in Contact [Kulturen in Kontakt], Faculty of Humanities 2 (Language and Literature), University of Innsbruck [http://www.uibk.ac.at/kik/] 

Contact Email: Christof.Diem@uibk.ac.at

International Conference :Heritage, Decolonization and the Field. January 26- 27, 2018 United Kingdom

Call For Abstracts: 

The development of heritage as a distinctive, international field of governance regulated through institutions like UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM and the IUCN is closely linked to practices of decolonisation and fieldwork. Taking cultural heritage alone, anthropologists, archaeologists, architects and engineers worked across the decolonising world in countries like Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan making the development of this new form of governance a reality; so too did experts from area studies, government survey agencies and philanthropic organisations. This work helped to (re-)constitute the fields that these practitioners were connected to, creating new disciplinary assemblages, new forms of knowledge, and rearranging the relationship of fieldworkers to the places where they laboured. At the same time, this process was not simply a product of decolonisation; in fact, it had its origins in knowledge practices which were often closely connected to practices of colonial governance and the complex administrative relationship between colonies and metropoles. These older, colonial practices were simultaneously reconstituted and entangled within these newly emergent disciplinary assemblages and knowledge practices as decolonisation gathered pace.

Yet despite increased interest in the histories and practice of cultural and natural heritage, there is little understanding of how their interconnection with decolonisation and the field actually took place. How did these three things work together to make heritage governance a reality? How did decolonisation shape the form of that governance and the sorts of fieldwork that took place? How, vice versa, did these forms of fieldwork and governance shape decolonisation, and how also did colonial practices play a role? Moreover, how (if at all) do the answers to such questions vary across time and space? If we are to understand the relationship between heritage, decolonisation and the field—and, by extension, the development of heritage governance itself—providing answers to these questions is a necessity, as is considering the methodologies which we might use to make these answers effective.

This conference invites papers which address these questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, and which in particular use international, comparative, or global case studies to do so. We are interested in papers that take the field of ‘heritage’ as one which is intentionally broad and contingent, encompassing both ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ heritage and the diverse range of institutions by which it is governed (museums, herbaria, zoos, regional, national and international historic preservation agencies etc). The organisers (William Carruthers, Andreas Gestrich and Indra Sengupta, German Historical Institute London; Rodney Harrison, AHRC Heritage Priority Area Leadership Fellow, UCL Institute of Archaeology) welcome abstracts of no more than 400 words, which should be submitted to carruthers@ghil.ac.uk by 31st May 2017. 

Financial support will be prioritised for those participants without their own travel funds and early career researchers.

Contact Email: carruthers@ghil.ac.uk

URL: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/call_for_papers.html#c589