Program: Memory on the Move - International Symposium

Program: Memory on the Move - International Symposium

When: 2-3 December 2010

Where: Utrecht, The Netherlands

The Dynamics of Cultural Remembrance: An Intermedial Perspective', funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research)

Where the first generation of memory scholars were concerned with the ways in which stories and images about the collective past were recorded, preserved, canonised -- in short, ‘stabilised’ – this symposium is concerned instead with the ways in which memories can and do ‘move’: across media, across generations, and across cultural, social and national borders. It aims to develop a more dynamic approach to collective memory emphasizing liquidity, mobility, travelling, mutability, and directionality alongside the more familiar and static notions of ‘sites,’ ‘monumentality,’ ‘heritage.’

This two-day symposium marks the conclusion of the four-year project 'The Dynamics of Cultural Remembrance: An Intermedial Perspective', funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). It reviews the conceptual, methodological, and historical issues brought into play in the dynamics of collective memory. In particular it aims to conceptualize further the intersection between, on the one hand, the specifically cultural dynamics involved in the sharing and shaping of memories and, on the other hand, the social and political dynamics involved in the contestation and/or acceptance of particular stories.

Key questions include: Does the evolution of public memory, and its contestation, follow particular cultural and social pathways? Which memories mobilize? How do narratives travel or (as in the case of conflict) fail to travel between different communities? How do memories travel between mnemonic communities and which ones fail to do so (i.e. what are the limits of prosthetic memory?) How have memory practices and ideas of memory evolved?
What are the implications of a more ‘fluid’ notion of memory for discussions of identity?

Organisation

Ann Rigney
Paulus Bijl
Laura Basu
Manon Meijer (secretariat)

More information and registration
For further information and registration, please contact: gw_cultures@uu.nl
ALL INTERESTED ARE INVITED TO ATTEND! Given limited seating, registration is necessary.

The symposium is part of a larger series of meetings on the theme of Transnational Memories, organized within the framework of the university research area Cultures and Identities.

www.culturesidentities.nl

Programme

Thursday 2 December: Sweelinckzaal, Drift 21

Session 1 Chair: Ann Rigney
9.30-10.00	registration
10.00-10.15	welcome
10.15-11.15	Aleida Assmann, Resonance and Impact: The Role of Emotions in Cultural Memory
11.15-11.30	Coffee/tea
11.30-12.30	Alison Landsberg, Memory, Media, Political Subjectivity: Theorizing Distant Engagements
12.30-14.00	Lunch break
Session 2 Chair: TBA
14.00-15.00	Marianne Hirsch & Leo Spitzer, School Pictures and Their Afterlives
15.00-15.55	Julia Noordegraaf, Iterating Archival Footage and the Memory of War
	Paulus Bijl, Emerging Memory: Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural Remembrance
16.00-16.15	Tea/coffee
16.15-17.00	Judith Pollmann, Versatile tales: Memory Practices Before and After Modernity
17.00-17.30	General Discussion
	Drinks!

Friday 3 December: Academiegebouw (room Belle van Zuylen), Domplein 29

Session 3 Chair: TBA
9.30-10.30	Astrid Erll, Fluidity/Stability: Cape Town as a City of (Trans-)cultural Memory
10.30-10.45	Coffee
10.45-11.30	William Uricchio, Cities, Memories, Mobilities
11.30-12.30	Chiara De Cesari, Memory Movements and the Movements of Memory: Of Heritage and Biennales in Palestine
	Liedeke Plate, Amnesiology: Towards the Study of Oblivion
12.30-14.00	Lunch break
Session 4 Chair: TBA
14.00-15.00	Bill Schwarz, Remembering Race: The Articulations of Memory
15.00-15.15	Coffee
15.15-16.15	Laura Basu, Remembering an Iron Outlaw: The Cultural Memory of Ned Kelly and the Development of Australian Identities
	Ann Rigney, Intersectionality: When Memories Collide
16.15-17.00	General Discussion
17.00	Closing
	Drinks!