*CFP* "PAINFUL TRUTHS AND UNSPOKEN WORDS: REMEMBERING GENOCIDES AND THE HOLOCAUST IN DIFFERENT GENRES AND REGIONS OF THE WORLD", SPECIAL ISSUE, GENEALOGY JOURNAL

Initial world responses to the Holocaust included the declaration “never again” (Gilbert, 2000; Reese, 2017; Herman, 2018; Power, 2013). This Special Issue on “Remembering Genocides and the Holocaust” invites contributions from different fields, such as the film, music, museums, and literature. Contributions may explore specific representations in their own right or the relationship between representations and lived experiences pertaining to genocide/ holocaust. They may focus on how remembrances of Holocausts and Genocides have been transformed over time, including, but not limited to the globalization, nationalization or privatization of such memories. The following may help illustrate the scope of the Special Issue but are not intended to limit the choice of topic:

• Overview: how have portrayals of Holocausts or Genocides changed in response to the activities of political movements or advocacy groups; who decides official labels and categories, including the role of community representatives; issues of societal acceptability of representations; the different conceptual bases in which such representations are grounded and the historical, social, and political underpinnings of such changes, etc. 

*CFP* "RE-WRITING / RE-IMAGINING THE PAST", THE 22ND ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

The 22nd Annual International Conference of the English Department

Re-writing / Re-imagining the Past

University of Bucharest

To be held online, 3–5 June 2021

 

The English Department of the University of Bucharest invites proposals for the Literature and Cultural Studies section of its 22nd Annual International Conference:

“I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new one makes the old bottles explode.”

Angela Carter in “Notes from the Front Line”

*CFP* "SHIFTING CONSTELLATIONS: GERMANY AND GLOBAL (DIS)ORDER", INTERNATIONAL PROJECT CONFERENCE

International Project Conference

Shifting Constellations: Germany and Global (Dis)Order

Wednesday 30 June - Friday 2 July 2021

 

IGES Birmingham’s DAAD-funded international research project (2019-21) explores Germany’s responses to unprecedented, ongoing disruptions and redefinitions in global politics, culture and society. The Covid-19 crisis has compounded longer standing challenges posed to a liberal globalisation consensus by more assertive national policies (Putin’s Russia, Britain’s Brexit) and a new brand of nationalist leaders (Xi Jinping in China, Trump in the US, Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil). These ongoing disruptions and challenges to the global order have exposed and exacerbated social and racial inequalities, environmental injustices and related patterns of migration on global and national levels, which liberal ideas and approaches seem unable to address in a sustainable way. The project asks: how is Germany navigating this new “World in Revolt” (The New Statesman) which is characterized by the rise of populism and radical right-wing politics on the one hand, and civic discontent in action (Extinction Rebellion, ‘Me too’, BLM) on the other?

*CFP* "SHARING WAR MEMORIES - FROM THE MILITARY TO THE CIVILIAN", WAR MEMORIES CONFERENCE 2020/21

War Memories (2020/21)

Sharing War Memories – From the Military to the Civilian

22, 23 & 24 June 2021 (Le Mans University)

 

War narratives are subject to emphases, orientations and points of view that give a particular flavour to wars fought by populations (anonymously, individually and/or hidden in an organisation, secret or not) and by the military (from high command to the ‘unknown soldier’). Such accounts evolve with the benefit of hindsight, the writing of history textbooks and the constant (re)interpretations of archives (new or not) and the official version a country wishes to put forward according to its political agendas and visions of patriotism, citizenship and human rights, or its diplomatic or international policy objectives. The narratives of wars vary with the context and the need for men and women to express their inner feelings when faced with the torments and human atrocities of war; they also reflect the place of individuals within a group and the implications of group cohesion within the larger community.

*CFP* "GENRE/NOSTALGIA", AN ONLINE FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES CONFERENCE

Genre/nostalgia 2021

An online film and television studies conference

University of Hertfordshire, January 5&6 2021

 

Film and TV genres and nostalgia have long been intertwined. Fundamentally, both are rooted in the practice of creatively recycling and adapting modes of the past; Steve Neale’s (1990) assertion that genres are processes of repetition and variation is also applicable to many films and programmes which reimagine historical events, past eras, earlier styles and classic works of literature. Period dramas regularly cite the codes and conventions of past genres as a means of triggering collective memories of an era, while for multiple other film and TV genres, the past is a key component: for instance, science fiction might depict the past as a function of time travel, while the Western is founded on its 19th century American frontier setting, and gothic horror is often associated with Victorian England or based on fin de siècle literature.

*CFP* "CINEMA AND ARCHITECTURE/URBANISM/MEMORY IN ROMANIA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EAST EUROPEAN FILM BULLETIN

Romanian cinema is at the forefront of addressing the challenges that the country faces today, often linking troublesome memories to urban spaces. Recent films such as Radu Jude’s I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History as Barbarians and Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada address collective processes of remembering by linking them to physical places - public as well as private -, thereby exemplifying the way in which memory is dependent on and projected onto the locus of the city. Media artists, such as Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor, have also explored the topographies of memory. At the crossroads of the country’s past and future, architecture is a powerful force for cinematic storytelling, displaying a feeling of “restorative nostalgia” (Svetlana Boym) as well as a desire for change. 

As part of its Romanian focus 2021, the East European Film Bulletin is preparing a special issue on the topic of architecture and memory in Romanian cinema, television, video art and experimental film. We are looking for contributions that examine and analyse the diverse relationships between cinema, architecture and memory and their links with Romania’s complex memory, both remote and recent.

*CFP* "HERITAGE AND THE CITY. SEMIOTICS AND POLITICS OF CULTURAL MEMORY IN URBAN SPACES", 39TH - 40TH ISSUES, LEXIA: JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS

This Special Issue of Lexia aims at bringing together articles that critically reflect, from a semiotic angle, on the relation between cultural memory and the city, exploring the semiotic and political role that cultural heritage plays today within urban spaces, with a specific, although not exclusive, focus on difficult, uncomfortable and dissonant heritage (Macdonald; Tunbridge & Ashworth). Contributions from all disciplines dealing with cultural heritage are welcomed, since the issue intends to propose an interdisciplinary dialogue about the semiotic dimension of heritage in urban environments, that is, its meaning, but also its processes of construction, transformation, interpretation and translation.

The main issue at stake is the city-heritage connection. On the one hand, cities are places of collective memories par excellence: public spaces of mise-en-scène of historical, political, social identities and knotted fabrics of places of memory (“loci of collective memory”, according to the popular definition by the architect Aldo Rossi). On the other hand, cities are also dynamic spaces in constant transformation and redefinition, in which identities and memories are always renegotiated through everyday practices and re-written by the manifold subjectivities and communities that inhabit them. If the city is (a texture of) place(s) of memory, this memory has to be deemed as processual, dynamic and in constant evolution – a palimpsest in which traces and signs of both history and memory sediment, accumulate and stratify, generating complex and diversified effects of meaning.

DEFENSA DE TESIS "ESTRATEGIAS Y TÁCTICAS EN EL CINE ARGENTINO DE LOS AÑOS SESENTA: LA PROCEDENCIA DEL NUEVO CINE LATINOAMERICANO"

Próxima defensa de tesis del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Información de la tesis: 


"Estrategias y tácticas en el cine argentino de los años sesenta: la procedencia del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano"

Autor/a: CARLOS DANIEL GARCÍA RIVAS

*CFP* "FOTOGRAFÍA EN, SOBRE Y DESDE CENTROAMÉRICA", DOSSIER TEMÁTICO, REVISTA ISTMO

“¿Cómo leer las imágenes literarias de Centroamérica sin sentirnos obligados y obligadas a mirar sus imágenes fotográficas y artísticas?, ¿cómo hemos aprendido a leer las imágenes literarias sin mirar las imágenes fotográficas y artísticas …?”. 

Con estas dos preguntas Pablo Hernández Hernández abre su ensayo sobre testimonio y fotografía en América Central, en el que propone que ambas plataformas estéticas, a pesar de su asociación con la referencialidad, producen y materializan un sentido. Las preguntas invitan a relacionar palabras e imágenes o, como sugiere el autor, “actos de palabra y actos de imagen”. Sin embargo, estas mismas preguntas conducen también hacia otro tipo de reflexión: ¿Dónde están las imágenes fotográficas sobre, desde Centroamérica y/o producidas en el Istmo? ¿Cómo circulan? ¿Cómo y dónde se estudian? 

Estas interrogantes no son fortuitas. Los dos volúmenes titulados Sueño de la razón. Fotografía sudamericana (Santiago de Chile, 201X y 2016) no incluyen a ningún fotógrafo o fotógrafa centroamericano/a, si bien México parece pertenecer a esa “Sudamérica”. 

*CFP* "FINE-COMBING THE PAST: FRAMES, PATTERNS AND METAPHORS", SPRING 2021 ISSUE, THE FRENCH JOURNAL OF IRISH STUDIES

The raison d'être of this thematic issue is to showcase innovative, experimental and disruptive approaches to transforming the traces of the Irish past into evidence and narratives from as broad a range of perspectives as possible.

Feeding the processes involved in working through the past that are expressed by the German word vergangenheitsbewältigung through an Irish Studies prism, we reinscribe the Irish expression mionchíoradh an am atá caite (fine-combing the past) as a prompt for engaging with and processing the time before our perpetual present and organising the articles in this volume.

As in the German, the Irish phrase implies the evolution, renovation or creation of methodologies to disentangle and sift the traces of the past and carefully work towards healthier narratives. Simultaneously, Cíoradh also implies disturbing, shaking things up, harassing and aggravating, and we are particularly interested in subjects that are generally avoided: the difficult, unpopular, awkward, inconvenient, undocumented, invisible and impossible. 

*CFP* "IMÁGENES Y VERDAD: MEMORIA, CUERPO Y REPRESENTACIÓN", VOL. 30, Nº 2 (MARZO-ABRIL DE 2021), REVISTA EL PROFESIONAL DE LA INFORMACIÓN

Hemos empezado a planificar el v. 30, n. 2 (marzo-abril de 2021) de la revista El profesional de la información sobre

Imágenes y verdad: memoria, cuerpo y representación

Uno de los retos más urgentes para la teoría de la imagen contemporánea pasa directamente por explorar las relaciones entre materialización –de relatos, de símbolos, de identidades o de pequeñas o grandes mitologías– y desaparición –de cuerpos, de marcos simbólicos, de certezas–.

Esa tensión que tiene que ver con los replanteamientos sobre el estatuto de la “verdad” con respecto a la representación (Zunzunegui; Zumalde, 2019), con la complejidad de los nuevos modos de percibir las imágenes (Català, 2017) o con el hipotético resurgimiento de los metarrelatos a partir del debate abierto con disciplinas tan diferentes como la historia del arte o las neurociencias (Amaba, 2019).

Todo lo que rodea a las imágenes parece haberse modificado: desde sus métodos de producción y sus canales de exhibición (Steyerl, 2018), pasando por la compleja relación con los archivos (Mitchell, 2017), llegando incluso a cuestionar las metodologías que utilizamos para analizarlas y clasificarlas (Fernández–Mallo, 2018).

*CFP* "THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY: EUROPEAN HISTORY AND POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY CRIME NARRATIVES", VOLUME EDITED

To talk about the crime genre—as opposed to detective or spy or noir fiction—is to recognise the comprehensiveness of a category that speaks to and contains multiple sub-genres and forms (Ascari, 2007). In this volume, we want to uncover the ways in which the crime genre, in all of its multiple guises, forms and media/transmedia developments, has investigated and interrogated the concealed histories and political underpinnings of national and supranational societies and institutions in Europe, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Two most popular expression of the crime genre, the detective novel and the spy novel, have long been identified as ‘sociological’ in their orientation (Boltanski, 2012). These forms often tackle enigmas or uncover conspiracies that are concealed by and within states, asking searching questions about the failures of democracy and the national and international criminal justice systems to deliver just societies. Similarly, following the example of U.S. hard-boiled fiction, the ‘noir’ variant of the genre has also established itself as a ‘literature of crisis’ (according to Jean-Patrick Manchette’s formula), where the shredding of official truths and of ‘reality’ itself ends up revealing dark political motives that elicit an even starker set of ethical and affective interrogations (Neveu, 2004). 

*CFP* "PERIODISMO, PROPAGANDA Y GUERRA CIVIL ESPAÑOLA: NUEVAS MIRADAS EN EL 80 ANIVERSARIO DEL FIN DEL CONFLICTO", VOL. 25, Nº 2, REVISTA HISTORIA Y COMUNICACIÓN SOCIAL

La revista Historia y comunicación social de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid hace un llamamiento para la recepción de artículos para su Volumen 25 nº2, que será publicado en 2020.

El número será un monográfico titulado Periodismo, propaganda y Guerra Civil Española: nuevas miradas en el 80 aniversario del fin del conflicto. Con la distancia que ofrece el tiempo, en este número se pretende reflexionar sobre uno de los acontecimientos más importante de la Historia de España, la sangrienta guerra civil. El objetivo es ofrecer nuevas líneas de investigación sobre el conflicto, poniendo el acento en los nuevos enfoques que se han brindado al tema en los últimos años. Nuevos enfoques y perspectivas sobre un tema de gran interés y relevancia para comprender el pasado pero también el presente y el futuro no solo de España.   

Por todas estas razones, desde la revista Historia y comunicación social (UCM), queremos invitar a un debate y reflexión sobre estos temas desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar. 

*CFP* “COLONIAL, ANTI-COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL MUSEUMS, COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITIONS”, SPECIAL ISSUE, LUSOPHONE JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES

The encounter between audiences and art objects, in a specific space, has a long and complex history. It is a hermeneutical challenge, which changes over time, in accordance with the needs of the epoch and the objectives of each society and culture. In this encounter between art, time and audiences – which is both complex and fleeting – museums, collections and exhibitions project different representations of the world and narratives of the lives of human communities, which observe the standards of a wide array of different, and often conflicting, curatorial strategies.

Museums, collections and exhibitions are always regulated by political and programmatic objectives and are therefore open to multiple interpretations. Museums, collections and exhibitions always observe a regime of truth, regardless of whether they are founded by nation states, or by revolutionary or counter-revolutionary forces, and whether they are in support of the established regimes, or aim to alter the established order. This regime of truth is the core condition for the possibility of representations that a specific community makes of itself and its epoch, while also formulating possibilities of meaning in order to help us understand what it means to be human.

*CFP* “HISTORICIZING MYTHS IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA: CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS AND NATIONALISTS/FASCIST AGENDAS”, EDITED BOOK

Call for papers for a book approved for publication by Routledge, on Bollywood cinema, expected to fall within the interdisciplinary spaces of Cultural Studies, Film Studies and Postcolonial Studies. 

The rise and rise of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism or political Hindu agenda that has engulfed India has also initiated the favorite pursuit of right wing of invoking the ‘glorious past’. This ‘glorious past is primarily being invoked by a surge of historical(s) in Bollywood. 

Indian Popular Cinema has evolved through various genres and has successfully and consistently borrowed plots from History to create classics like Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Meera (1979). As a technology, able to picture and embody the temporality of the past, cinema has become central to the mediation of collective memory through History.

*CFP* “PENSAR LO REAL: (AUTO)FICCIÓN Y DISCURSO CRÍTICO EN EL ÁMBITO HISPÁNICO”, CONGRESO GILCO 2020

Los textos autoficcionales coinciden en subrayar la dimensión artificial y fantasmática del sujeto, así como de los materiales con los que éste construye su biografía. Dicho desafío a los pactos de recepción tradicionales evidencia el valor interlocutivo de toda obra artística, al instar al lector o espectador a descubrir las claves de su propia elaboración. La llamada a un receptor advertido, alerta a los mecanismos de construcción del relato y a los espejeos de la personalidad representada a la vez que edificada en el texto, alcanza especial relevancia en las autoficciones que buscan articular discursos críticos en torno a lo real. 

La perspectiva contextual de la autoficción permitirá entender mejor cómo, lejos de construir historias narcisistas, este tipo de obras problematiza nociones axiales del discurso artístico y de la figura del autor a partir de la tensión entre lo referencial y lo ficcional. 

Por esa razón, el presente congreso tiene como fin estudiar aquellas manifestaciones producidas a partir del año 2000 en las que el yo-autor se interroga, desde un punto de vista político, acerca de realidades que le conciernen no solo como individuo, sino también como sujeto de la Historia y/o como miembro de una sociedad determinada. 

*CFP* "SHARING WAR MEMORIES - FROM THE MILITARY TO THE CIVILIAN", WAR MEMORIES (2020) INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

War Memories (2020)

Sharing War Memories – From the Military to the Civilian

24, 25 & 26 June 2020 (Le Mans University, France)

 

War narratives are subject to emphases, orientations and points of view that give a particular flavour to wars fought by populations (anonymously, individually and/or hidden in an organisation, secret or not) and by the military (from high command to the ‘unknown soldier’). Such accounts evolve with the benefit of hindsight, the writing of history textbooks and the constant (re)interpretations of archives (new or not) and the official version a country wishes to put forward according to its political agendas and visions of patriotism, citizenship and human rights, or its diplomatic or international policy objectives. The narratives of wars vary with the context and the need for men and women to express their inner feelings when faced with the torments and human atrocities of war; they also reflect the place of individuals within a group and the implications of group cohesion within the larger community.

Civilians’ knowledge of the war effort and the involvement of the military is informed by two types of documents: primary sources (letters, emails, photographs, videos, testimonies, trench gazettes, blogs, etc.) provide direct information about the war experienced at an individual level, whereas secondary sources mediate these artefacts by incorporating them into another narrative.

*CFP* "MOVIE THEATRES IN WARTIME", COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON FILM DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION DURING WORLD WAR II SYMPOSIUM

Movie Theatres in Wartime

Comparative Research on Film Distribution and Exhibition During World War II

Amsterdam, 4-6 June 2020

Scholars are hereby invited to sign up for a hands-on symposium on film exhibition and distribution during World War II. The purpose of the symposium is threefold: (1) developing and sharing methodological expertise in compiling, analysing and comparing data on historical film programming; (2) gaining more insight in the transnational patterns of film supply and demand during the war, across belligerent and neutral countries; (3) building and strengthening a network of scholars with a shared interest in the topic. The symposium follows up on the workshop “Film Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption during the Second World War” (Leuven, 2018) by the same organisers. 

The symposium is co-produced by CREATE (University of Amsterdam) and DICIS (Scientific Research Network on Digital Cinema Studies) and hosted by the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam. It will consist of two main segments: a seminar with brief presentations, and a workshop where participants will work hands-on with the collaboratively collected data. Participants in the symposium are requested to compile, in advance, a data set that consists of film programming data, according to a fixed data model, in order to allow for comparative analysis (see instructions below for more specifics). Afterwards, all data will be made publicly available in an open access environment.

*CFP* "HOLOCAUST MEMORY AND EDUCATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE", SPECIAL EDITION, HOLOCAUST STUDIES: CULTURE AND HISTORY

Digital media are playing an increasing role in Holocaust memory and education. These include digital mapping projects like De danske jøder i Theresienstadt, VR representations of former concentration and death camps, such as the one of Sobibór, viewable at Camp Vught in The Netherlands, interactive online archives that give researchers and learners the skills necessary to interpret documents at the Arolsen Archives (International Tracing Service), and 3-dimensional and holographic survivor talks in the US and UK. This special edition seeks to take stock of the wide range of digital projects in these fields and to consider the impact, challenges and potentials of such technologies for the future of Holocaust memory and education. 

Given the increasing presence of Neo-Nazi, alt-right and Holocaust denial rhetoric in online spaces, and debates about the corporate responsibility of organisations like Google and Facebook, and platforms such as 4Chan and 8Chan, it seems particularly timely to address the roles digital technology can play in informing cultural and collective memory of the Holocaust and educating about this past. These issues raise a multitude of questions that we invite potential contributors to explore, including but not limited to:

*CFP* 9TH INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL STORYTELLING CONFERENCE, LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY 2020 CONFERENCE

9th International Digital Storytelling Conference 

30 de marzo-1 de abril de 2020

Loughborough University 

Loughborough, UK

We invite you to join us at Loughborough University, UK, this Spring for an amazing gathering of digital storytelling professionals, academics, students, community partners, and activists. The conference will host various events in its structure for inclusion of diverse perspectives and voices. In addition to academic papers, workshops, and roundtable discussions, we encourage practitioners from community settings, artists and students to contribute and express their creativity through various formats (short performances, artworks, video/audio submissions, etc.).

Storytelling has been defined as ‘the artform of social interaction’ (Wilson, 1998), not only for its inner dynamics, but also for its power to unlock grass-roots knowledge, explore dilemmas, develop community resilience, engender change.