Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Workshop
When: 4 – 5 November 2022
Where: Prague, Czech Republic
Deadline for submission: 9 September 2022
Convenors:
Astrid Greve Kristensen (Sorbonne University)
Rose Smith (Charles University & University of Groningen),
Emina Zoletic (University of Warsaw)
A Workshop organized by 4EUPlus with the collaboration of CEFRES.
We kindly invite Ph.D. students in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences to apply for our one-day workshop ‘TRUTH AND UNTRUTH. TRANSMISSIONS OF MEMORIES OF WAR’. With memory studies as the theoretical focus of this workshop, we will host a varied interdisciplinary workshop consisting of presentations and discussions among young scholars in Prague this November 2022. We will tackle the transmission of memories of war, inviting scholars to present their research on this topic in different media, such as oral/family history, museums, literature, film, the arts, news media, et cetera, with a focus on the kitschification of the past.
As war once again ravages a European country, it is hard not to persist with clichéd phrases to describe the horrors we are observing. Our collective struggle to understand is palpable in repeated phrases such as: How can this be happening – again? But inherent in language clichés is also the danger of inertia and falsehoods. As Czech writer Karel Čapek put it in a 1933 article: “The cliché blurs the difference between truth and untruth. If it were not for clichés, there wouldn’t be demagogues and public lies, and it wouldn’t be so easy to play politics, starting with rhetoric and ending with genocide.” The dangerous use of clichés, as well as kitsch and nostalgia in media representations of the past, lies at the core of this workshop. The aesthetic kitsch of Nazi propaganda or the aim to recover a lost Russian city in Kyiv constitute examples of this. To better understand what is transpiring in Ukraine, one is compelled to look to the past for answers. Continue reading CFP – Truth and Untruth. Transmission of Memories of War →