Landscapes with Shadows. Presentation of Luba Jurgenson’s research project

In June, July and August 2022, the researcher, writer and translator Luba Jurgenson, professor at Sorbonne University and director of Eur’ORBEM, will be at CEFRES as a guest researcher. For further information, click here to see her CV.

When: Thursday, June 30th, 10:30 – 12:00 a.m.
Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague & also “online” – link to ZOOM meeting on request (cefres@cefres.cz)
Language: English

This project endeavors to identify, describe and study landscapes in Central Europe that were scenes of extreme violence during the 20th century. At the crossroads of memory studies, ecocriticism and image analysis, “Landscapes with Shadows” intends to revisit the question of landscape memory by confronting testimonial/archival representations, landscape practices, memory constructions (literary, artistic, political), and the environmental after-effects of the violence.

Significant and still effective traces of conflicts and massacres have been left in landscapes which constitute our everyday living environments. While collective memory is often studied via its manifestations in public spaces, as museums and commemorations, “Landscapes with Shadows” focuses on ordinary, yet emotionally invested places, where natural elements bear stigmas of a traumatic past.  It is a question of considering landscape not only as memorial representation, but also as sensorial experience, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactive, grasping unique modes of transgenerational and intercommunity transmissions of memory shaped by perceptions and practices of landscapes in these multicultural places.