Deadline for Submissions: March 10, 2017
Call for Papers
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the publication of Robert Antelme’s The Human Race and Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, the Yale University Memory Studies in Modern Europe working group invites doctoral students from all disciplines to share their research in a workshop devoted to life-writing and war in Europe in the long 20th century. This workshop offers a forum to discuss methodology and work in progress as well as to connect with fellow scholars at various stages of research. Selected participants will have 15 minutes to present their paper, followed by a 15-minute discussion with the audience.
- Representations of war, conflict, or genocide in autobiographies, biographies, diaries, letters, memoirs, and personal accounts
- Literary works of testimony, such as those by Holocaust survivors
- The relationship between writing and remembering war
- Transnational memory and comparative approaches in life writings about war
- The relevance of individually written memories in the formation of collective or public narratives
- Silences, exclusions, “forgetting” in war recollections and their implications
- Fake memories, truth claims, and reliability of written testimonies
- Questions of authority, anonymity, and pseudonymity
- Genre and gender implications in life writings about war
- Aphasia, amnesia, and traumatic memory of the war
- Return to ordinary life: writing in the aftermath of the war
Please send us a 250/300 word abstract and a short bio, including current affiliation, by March 10th, 2017. Accepted speakers will be notified by March 17thand are asked to submit a draft of their presentation by April 7th.
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide funding to participants. However, there are no registration fees. Refreshments will be provided, courtesy of the Whitney Humanities Center.