'CONSTRUCTIONS OF CONFLICT: TRANSMITTING MEMORIES OF THE PAST IN EUROPEAN HISTORIOGRAPHY, LITERATURE AND MEDIA'

 

 

 An international and interdisciplinary conference hosted by the MEICAM
(Modern European Ideologies, Conflict and Memory) research group,
Swansea University, 10-12 September 2007

 

Printable version:  'Constructions of Conflict' conference programme (22 August 2007)

 

 

Monday September 10 2007

13.00 Registration and refreshments

13.50 Welcome

 

14.00-14.55 Keynote lecture by Mary Fulbrook (University College London): ‘Patterns of memory’

 

15.00-16.30 Panel

Contemporary Approaches to Memory
Slawomir Kapralski (Warsaw School of Social Psychology): ‘The memory of the Holocaust and the politics of identity in contemporary Poland’
Christina Kleiser (University of Vienna): ‘Is there a “shared memory”? Some critical reflections on the constitutive conditions of a culture of commemoration in the European context’
Patrick Finney (University of Wales Aberystwyth): ‘D-Day 2004: passing the torch to history?’

 

16.30-17.00 Tea

 

17.00-18.30 Parallel Sessions (1)

1A: Frontline Memories
Tim Grady (Portsmouth University): ‘Reconstructing patriotism: the German-Jewish soldiers of the First World War and the Holocaust’
Nicole Thatcher (University of Middlesex): ‘The “Malgré-nous”’
Neil Jenkings (Newcastle University) / Trish Winter (Sunderland University) / Rachel Woodward (Newcastle University): ‘Remembering and accounting for conflicts: the experience of UK ex-service personnel’

 

1B: Screening Memory
Emiliano Perra (University of Bristol): ‘Legitimating fascism through the Holocaust: the reception of the miniseries Giorgio Perlasca in Italy’
Giacomo Lichtner (University of Wellington): ‘The third way: reinterpretation of World War Two in contemporary French cinema’
Owen Evans (Swansea University): ‘Redeeming the demon? The legacy of the Stasi in Das Leben des Anderen (2006)’

 

1C: The Transmission of Memories in Eastern Europe
Michaela Peroutkova (University of Life Sciences, Prague): ‘Narratives about the expulsion of Germans: a Czech-German comparison’
Brigid Haines (Swansea University): ‘Enduring empires: the presence of the past in recent German-language fiction by writers from central and eastern Europe’
Axel Goodbody (University of Bath): ‘Remembering Chernobyl’

 

18.30 Dinner (Fulton House refectory)

19.30 Drinks reception and launch of the Journal of War and Culture Studies at the Digital Technium atrium

 

 

Tuesday September 11 2007

 

9.00-10.30 Parallel Sessions (2)

2A: Crimes and Perpetrators
Jennifer Cazenave (Northwestern University): ‘The variant voices of France: visual and textual representations of perpetrator testimony’
Claire Gorrara (Cardiff University): ‘Memories of conflict, conflicts of memory: representations of war in French crime narratives of the late 1940s and 1950s’
Angela Kimyongür (University of Hull) ‘Constructing memories of World War Two in France: Patrick Pécherot and Léo Malet’

 

2B: Mediating Memory in Serbia and Croatia
Catherine Baker (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies): ‘ “They tore down our houses, we built them up again”: Croatian popular music and representations of homeland war memory in Slavonia’
Tea Sindbaek (University of Aarhus, Denmark): ‘A national hero’s revival: the rehabilitation of Draža Mihailovic and the Chetniks in Serbian historical culture’
Jelena Obradovic (University of Birmingham): ‘Remembering Srebrenica: repression and denial of war crimes in Serbia’

 

2C: Divided Memories
Maud Bracke (University of Glasgow): ‘"We are all guilty": War memories in France and Europe before and after 1968’
Hubert Faustmann (Intercollege, Nicosia, Cyprus): ‘Selective memories and victimisation discourses in ethnic conflict: the case of Cyprus’                                                                                                                          

Anna Saunders (University of Wales, Bangor): 'Remembering Cold War division: wall remnants and monuments'
 

10.30-11.00 Refreshments

 

11.00-12.30 Parallel Sessions (3)

3A: Reporting Conflict
Karoline von Oppen (University of Bath): ‘The war in Bosnia through the eyes of German reporters’
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes (University College Dublin): ‘Private and public memories of Portugal’s colonial war: the case of Antonio Lobo Atunes’ war correspondence’
  

3B: Memory Conflicts: The G8 at Genoa
Inge Lanslots (Lessius Hogeschool of Antwerp) / Monica Jansen (University of Antwerp): ‘Re-imaging Genova 2001: the G8 in comics and icons of Carlo Giuliani’s death’
Vincenzo Binetti (University of Michigan): ‘Carlo Giuliani’s square: the G8, globalization and the (re)shaping of Genova’s urban culture’
Stefano Magni (University of Grenoble): ‘The relationship between the Italian crime novel and the G8 at Genoa’

 

3C: Aerial Warfare and Constructions of Victimhood
Neil Matheson (University of Westminster): ‘Aerial warfare, national identity and the “melancholy of ruins”’
Gabriel Moshenka (UCL Institute of Archaelogy): ‘Archaeology/memory/bombing’
Silke Arnold-de Simine (Birkbeck College, London): ‘London can take it! Remembering the air war, reliving the Blitz: iconic images of the bombed cities during World War Two and their instrumentalisation for current conflicts in Britain and Germany’

 

3D: Childhood Memories of Conflict
Claire Eldridge (University of St Andrews): ‘ “We, the children, are missing pieces from our history”. Constructing memories in the absence of direct transmission: the case of the Algerian War of Independence and the fils de harkis’
Jennifer Cameron (Columbia University): ‘Recasting the generational conflict: rupture and continuity in Christoph Meckel’s Suchbild and Stephan Wackwitz’s Ein unsichtbares Land’
Vitaliy Bezrogov (Institute of Theory and History of Education, Moscow):‘Conflicts between official atheism and private religion through children’s eyes: memories of Soviet childhood’

 

12.30-14.00 Lunch (Fulton House refectory)

 

14.00-15.30 Parallel Sessions (4)

4A: Sites of Memory
Christian Gudehus (Centre for Interdisciplinary Memory Research, Essen): ‘Holocaust narrations in German memorial guided tours’
Iro Katsaridou (Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece) / Annie Kontogiorgi (Ephorate of Modern Monuments, Ioannina): ‘World War Two memorials in Northern Greece: controversy and reconsideration’
James Mark (University of Exeter):  ‘Displaying Communism, Fascism and the Holocaust in Post-Communist Eastern Europe’

 

4B: Memories of the Spanish Civil War
Cinta Ramblado Minero (University of Limerick): ‘History, memory, fiction: the Thirteen Roses and discourses of recovery in contemporary Spain’
Anita Howard (University College Dublin): ‘Children of the civil war? A reconstruction of the conflict in two recent Spanish films’
  

4C: Recording Memories
Cahal McLaughlin (University of Ulster): ‘Recording audio visual memories from Armagh Gaol’
Anna Reading (London South Bank University): ‘Mobile witnessing: camera phone memories of atrocities and terror’
Judith Hattersley (University of Bath): ‘Mediated messages and conflict: an investigation of the authenticating power of archive images in contemporary European cinema’

 

15.30-16.00 Tea

 

16.00-17.30 Film showing of Beautiful Dachau; keynote lecture by the director Alan Marcus (University of Aberdeen)

 

19.30 Conference dinner at La Tasca restaurant, Swansea

 

 

Wednesday September 12 2007

9.30-11.00 Parallel Sessions (5)
5A: Memory Contests: The Great War
Stephen Woolsey (Houghton College, NY): ‘ “After Verdun it was different”: Cather, Faulks, and the novelist’s power to create a personal historiography of conflict in the Great War’
Vanda Wilcox (Oxford University): ‘Commemorating the First World War in Rome’
    
5B: Memories of Terrorism
Noel Cary (College of the Holy Cross, MA) ‘The Munich Olympics and the politics of memory’
Julian Preece (Swansea University): ‘Lives of the RAF: the biographical turn’
Magdalena Slastushinskaya (Russian Red Cross): ‘Beslan after Beslan’

5C: Memory Objects
Judith Meddick (Royal Holloway, University of London): ‘The erasure of the past in The Carpenter’s Pencil by Manuel Rivas’
Helmut Peitsch (University of Potsdam): ‘The use of the “final letter”: The resistance fighter Guenther Weisenborn’s changing role as witness in East and West Germany’
Clare Bielby (Edinburgh University): ‘Reading German terrorism’

 

11.00-11.30 Refreshments

 

11.30-12.30 Keynote lecture by John Foot (University College London): ‘Divided memories: history and memory in twentieth-century Italy’

 

12.30 Close of conference and lunch (Fulton House refectory).

 

 

MEICAM gratefully acknowledges the support of the following bodies and organisations:
ASMI (Association for the Study of Modern Italy)
Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict, Swansea University
GWACS (Group for War and Culture Studies)
Society for Italian Studies
School of Arts, Swansea University

 

Photo by Richard Welch.