Polish Studies Newsletter

Event

Date of the event: 19.04.2017 - 21.04.2017
Added on: 03.03.2017

Traumatic Modernities: From Comparative Literature to Medical Humanities / International Conference and Seminars

Type of the event:
Conference
City or town:
Kraków

Organizers:

 

Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University 
 
in collaboration with Hejna Family Chair in Polish Literature and Language at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Research Centre for Memory Studies, JU 
&  
SPeCTReSS Consortium:
Trinity College Dublin; Rurh-Universität, Bochum; University of Zagreb, University of Tartu, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, University of São Paolo, Yale University, University of Tokyo

Trauma, a term borrowed from the language of medicine for cultural theory and the social sciences, has joined the vocabularies of many disciplines over the last two decades; they use it to describe the aftermath of devastating events that shatter the integrity of individual and community experiences. 

This aftermath affects various systems of representation, mechanisms for constructing knowledge, and the organization of private and public space, generally pertaining to such phenomena as: the Holocaust, genocide, slavery, colonization and decolonization, environmental catastrophes, accidents, sexual abuse, exclusion founded on gender, race, origins, domestic violence, war, ethnic and religious conflicts, political revolutions, terrorism, or forced migration. 

Specific historical events have inspired scholars to pose some questions about the role of trauma in shaping individual and community memory and identity, and about its positive and negative consequences. This role involves the position of the witness, the victim, or the bystander and their ethical dimensions, the mechanisms of intergenerational transmission developed on a biological and cultural plane (post-memory, post-traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic culture, traumatic realism), as well as places particularly marked by painful events (traumascapes, shattered spaces). 

In our day, the category of trauma often pertains to the subject’s experience of pain, illness, suffering, disability, dying, and their social perception – phenomena particularly examined in terms of the dynamic field of the medical humanities.

In the present conference we will be particularly interested in trauma as a category for diagnosing modernity, and one that accompanies various discourses tied to modernization processes. We are looking for new readings of the classic texts (Freud, Lacan), categories, or theories in trauma studies, as well as presentations demonstrating the applicability of the concept of trauma in projects involving various symbolic practices. 

We are inviting scholars from different fields, disciplines, and sub-disciplines: doctors (including psychiatrists, palliative medicine specialists, and oncologists), neurobiologists, psychologists, lawyers, political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, religious scholars, literary scholars, visual culture researchers, scholars of film and performance, people researching memory, forensic aesthetics, pop culture, translation, and so on. 

We are interested in presentations that draw from the concept of cultural trauma inspired by the work of the intellectual patrons and participants in the SpeCTReSS project: Jeffrey Ch. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Piotr Sztompka.

Presentation proposal submissions (up to 300 words) should be sent to: traummod@gmail.com and biltoma@gmail.com by March 14, 2017).

The conference website will soon be up; look for information in the next bulletin.
The conference organizers will provide accommodation. We also plan to supply catering during the sessions and a joint supper.
The conference fees amount to 100 EUR; 450 PLN.
Information on accepted proposals will be e-mailed by March 18, 2017.
We plan to publish an English-language volume tied to the topic of the conference.

This event will be partially funded by the SPeCTReSS project (The Social Performance, Cultural Trauma and the Reestablishing of Solid Sovereignties) under the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska Curie Programme, contract number 612654, and the National Program for the Development of the Humanities.

Information

Application deadline for speakers:
14.03.2017 22:30
Added on:
3 March 2017; 13:15 (Mariola Wilczak)
Edited on:
3 March 2017; 13:15 (Mariola Wilczak)

See also

18.07.2017

THE 1ST BIAŁYSTOK CONFERENCE ON THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS

In recent years linguistic conferences organized by the Białystok circle of neophilologists have established a strong tradition in terms of providing a forum for the exchange of views on the nature of language. It all started almost fifteen years ago, in 2002. The main aim of the conferences was to provide a meeting ground for a wide range of scholars: linguists, literary scholars, foreign language teaching methodologists, to mention but a few groups of researchers participating in the events. The conferences explored the relationship between language, culture, and social interaction. They were often organized in co-operation with French language scholars.

23.01.2019

GENESIS – CRACOW 2019. Genetic Criticism: from Theory to Practice

Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and Institut des Textes & Manuscrits Modernes (ITEM) in Paris are pleased to invite you to participate in the international conference GENESIS  –  CRACOW 2019. GENESIS – CRACOW 2019 will be the second edition of a new series of conferences on genetic criticism, understood as the study of the creative process. The first edition, held on 7-9 June 2017 in Helsinki (Finland), was organized by the Finnish Literature Society and Institut des Textes & Manuscrits Modernes in Paris. The participants included scholars from Finland, France, Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Tunisia, Turkey, Wales and Canada.

30.05.2016

Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory

Almost 40 years after Nabokov's death his texts continue to function as literary Fabergé eggs in which scholars keep finding hidden surprises and previously overlooked details. As Nabokov wrote in Conclusive Evidence, "the unravelling of a riddle is the purest and most basic act of the human mind." However, readers and critics are divided on the issue of whether Nabokov is a postmodern riddle-maker enjoying the game itself without enabling the player to reach the ultimate solution, or whether the riddles are solvable by a reader astute enough to follow all the sophisticated patterns and allusions which point to Nabokov's metaphysical convictions.

23.12.2019

Varieties of Meaning and Content / The third "Context, Cognition and Communication"

The third Context, Cognition and Communication Conference will be hosted by the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. The main theme of the conference is "Varieties of Meaning and Content".

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