CfP: Faces of Postmemory 5 – Conflict or Negotiations? - Deadline 31 May 2022

Institute of Intercultural Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków and Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw are pleased to invite you to FACES OF POSTMEMORY 5 – CONFLICT OR NEGOTIATIONS? an interdisciplinary conference under the patronage of the Section of Heritage and Cultural Memory Studies of the Polish Ethnological Society.

Although Michael Rothberg's book Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization was published over a decade ago, the questions it raises are still relevant. The key questions: Does memory have to be a source of conflict? Or can memory become an area of negotiation?, remain unanswered to date. Therefore, taking Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory as a starting point, we propose to address them. As in the previous editions of Faces of Postmemory, we suggest that the participants focus on the acts of transfer of knowledge and experience within postmemory as understood by Marianne Hirsh. However, we do not impose any geographical or temporal restrictions. We still want the conference to be a meeting place for researchers representing various fields, and theoretical and methodological approaches. That is why, we welcome submissions from speakers from many areas of the humanities and social sciences: historians, linguists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, art historians, film, theatre and literary scholars, and architects.

We propose to reflect on the following questions:

• Does the collective memory built around a trauma always have to obscure and compete with the memory associated with another trauma?
• How do (different) memories negotiate in social space? Can different memories coexist peacefully, given the emotional load related to disputes over historical events?
• How do social groups interact when their identity was built on the memory of different events or different memory of the same events?
• Do conflicts of memories manifest themselves only in the social area or can they also concern an individual? In other words, can an individual carry different inherited traumas and how do they deal with such traumas? Does the autobiographical identity narrative allow the individual to successfully overcome memory conflicts?

At the same time, we are open to other perspectives on postmemory and the conflicts it may generate.

We are also proud to announce that the opening lecture will be delivered by Professor Ann Rigney (Universiteit Utrecht).

The conference will be held in Kraków, at the Faculty of International and Political Studies, ul. Władysława Reymonta 4.

Conference languages: Polish and English.

Please complete the registration form by 31 May 2022: https://forms.office.com/r/5z0hqn1jhh

The organizers reserve the right to change the place/mode of the conference. If an in-person conference is not possible or excessively difficult to organize due to circumstances beyond our control, especially due to restrictions, regulations and prohibitions related to COVID-19, we will immediately announce any changes on the conference’s website.