Department of English Philology, Vilnius University, Lithuania: September 29 – October 1, 2016
The Department of English Philology at Vilnius University, Lithuania, in cooperation with the Lithuanian Association for the Study of English (LAUTE), is pleased to announce the international conference History, Memory, and Nostalgia: Literary and Cultural Representations, to be held in Vilnius on September 29 – October 1, 2016.
The eve of the new age has alerted us to the conflicted nature of historical memory that defined the 20th century while simultaneously assaulting us with new historical upheavals that demand responsibility and critical consideration. Records of historical experience and historical negotianism have been shown to be inextricably bound to power structures, institutional dynamics, currents of globalization, social dreams, and personal desires. The premise of this interdisciplinary conference is to examine the relevance of the past to the present and future in terms of the shifting attitudes to personal and collective experiences that have shaped dominant Western critical discourses about history, memory, and nostalgia. What theoretical frameworks lend themselves best to the study of historical complexities and emotional ambiguities that respond to them? How do we grasp the rhythms and forms of longing? How does nostalgia unfold with regard to space and time? Scholars working in the fields of literature, film, and visual arts are invited to submit proposals for papers that take issue with the epistemological, hermeneutic, ethical, and esthetic dimensions of the representational practices through which we revisit and revise the meaning of the past.
Suggested topics include, but are not restricted to:
- Positingmemory: conflicts, contingencies, continuities in theoretical paradigms; memory and commemoration; knowledge and nostalgia;
- Discursive configurations: history as narrative;alternative histories; marginal subjectivities; invented traditions; the discourse of nostalgia; virtual reality and collective memory; second-hand nostalgia;
- Fact vs. fiction: biography/ memoir and other narrative forms encapsulating memory and invention;historical voices of illusion and delusion;the return to origins;
- Identity and historical agency: memory as a source of identity; the body as a site of historical experience; trauma and jouissance; prosthetic memory;
- Collecting histories: narrative and visual practices of the museum, archive, and library; books and computers as devices of storage and consumption;nostalgia and (post)modernity;nostalgia and popular culture;
- Historical specters and speculations: nostalgia and melancholy as discourses; the poetics of the uncanny, the marvelous, and the fantastic; nostalgia and intimacy;souvenir culture; restorative and reflective nostalgia;
- In search of lost time: forms of culturallegacy and legitimation; the frailty of historical consciousness; reflection and refraction; leaving and longing; the diasporic imagination; nostalgia and (post)coloniality;
Selected papers will be published either in the peer-reviewed MLA indexed journal “Literatura” or as a separate volume.
The conference registration fee is EUR 50 to be paid upon arrival and covers:
- conference folder and badge
- refreshments during scheduled breaks
- receptions
Interested participants are invited to submit a 300-word abstract of their proposed papers (with the name and affiliation of the presenter) before 1 April 2016 by e-mail or airmail to:
Prof.dr. Regina Rudaityte
Dept. of English Philology,
Faculty of Philology,
Vilnius University,
Universiteto Str. 5
01513 Vilnius, LITHUANIA;
e-mail: reginarudaityte@hotmail.com