A huge thank you!

The Conference Team would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all speakers, attendees and those who provided any form of help towards making the ‘Migration and Transcultural Memory in the 21st Century’ conference a success. We feel that the day ran smoothly, and gave all attendees a chance to network, share research ideas, and take part in a variety of fascinating and thought-provoking discussions.

We thank you all for the effort you made in attending and participating in the day.

If you have any post-conference questions, as always, please do not hesitate to get in touch via our usual conference website: tnmigrationmemoryconf@gmail.com

The Conference Team.

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Full Programme

The Conference Team are very much looking forward to welcoming all speakers and attendees to the ‘Migration and Transcultural Memory in the 21st Century’ conference on 3rd May 2017.

Our full programme is now available – we are very excited to see some fascinating looking papers coming up tomorrow!

OUTLINE OF DAY:

9.00 – 9.15 Registration
9.15 – 9.30 Welcome and Opening Remarks
9.30 – 11.00 PANEL 1 – Forging Transcultural Frameworks of Memory: Dual Belongings Beyond Bounded Communities of Remembrance
11.00 – 11.15 Coffee Break
11.15 – 12.45 PANEL 2 – Historical and Familial Memories in Dialogue: Genealogies Across Cultures
12.45 – 14.00 Lunch
14.00 – 15.00 PANEL 3 – Multidirectional Migration of Memories in the Late Imperial Isles
15.00 – 15.15 Coffee Break
15.15 – 16.45 PANEL 4 – Mediums and Channels of Memory: Datafication, Television and Material Objects
16.45 – 17.00 Closing Remarks

 

PANEL 1 : Forging Transcultural Frameworks of Memory: Dual Belongings Beyond Bounded Communities of Remembrance

Songyun Zheng, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (visiting scholar at Queen Mary’s, London)
Harbin Jews: Memories on the Move
Daniela Zanini, University of London
‘Think about how difficult it has been to be Italian in this country’. Transcultural Memories of Italian Migration to Australia in Polenta e Goanna by Emilio Gabbrielli
Jan Lensen, Free University of Berlin
Through the Eyes of the Interstitial Agent: Migrant Interventions in Dutch Cultural Memory in Mano Bouzamour’s De belofte van Pisa
PANEL 2: Historical and Familial Memories in Dialogue: Genealogies Across Cultures

Beatrice Ivey, University of Leeds
Beyond ‘Beur’: Transcultural Memory in the Works of Ahmed Kalouaz
Hannah Kershaw, University of York
Postcolonial Genealogies in Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies and Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love

Nadia Butt, University of Giessen
‘Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories’: The Dynamics of Transcultural Memory in Vikram Seth’s Memoir Two Lives (2005)
PANEL 3: Multidirectional Migration of Memories in the Late Imperial Isles

Sara Dybris McQuaid, Aarhus University
The 1916 Easter Rising and the End of Empire: Transnational Templates of Irish and Indian Freedom Struggles

Jacco Visser, Aarhus University
Celebrating Victory Day of Bangladesh in East-London: Transnational Linkages and Local Power Struggles over the Bangladesh War of 1971
PANEL 4 :Mediums and Channels of Memory: Datafication, Television and Material Objects

Rieke Böhling, University of Bremen
Revisiting Migration Memories in the Context of Current Migratory Movements

Simona Palladino, University of Newcastle
Reflecting on Migrant’s Memories Through Biographical Objects: Perspectives of Older Italian Migrants in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Katrin Wunderlich, University of Cambridge
When Non-Minority Authors Migrate, Memories Travel: Towards an Ethics of Transcultural Reading in German-Language Representations of 9/11

Full programme to be released soon!

Registration for the conference has now closed: we thank the large number of you that have registered your attendance.

Keep your eyes open for the final programme for the day, which will be released shortly!

 

Registration now open!

We are pleased to announce that registration for non-presenting attendees is open between Wednesday 1st March and Friday 31st March.

Please click on the ‘registration’ tab for more details on how to register your attendance at the conference.

Our full draft programme is also now available under the ‘programme’ tab.

CfP: Migration and Transcultural Memory in the 21st Century

We are now accepting abstracts for the ‘Migration and Transcultural Memory in the 21st Century’ conference. See below for details of the CfP:

Migration and Transcultural Memory in the 21st Century – 3rd May 2017, The University of Leeds, UK.

Globalization, migration, the impact of mass media, as well as the increasing number of transnational organizations have led to the reconceptualization of cultural memory – not as stable and confined to a specific nation –  but as fluid and subject to constant change. National perceptions of the past are now recognized as being both influenced by transnational definitions of specific past events that have a supposed ‘global’ resonance, and marked by heterogeneous (minority) sub-memories. As important aspect of the concept of “traveling of memories”, migration has become a central topic of inquiry in Memory Studies. Belonging to several national, religious or cultural frameworks of memory, the figure of the “migrant” exemplifies the evolving global network of recollection. “Migrants” may carry with them specifically traumatic memories that cross local recollections as well as institutionalized memory constructions on the national and the transnational level.

The overall aim of this one-day PGR conference is to define the specificity of transcultural migrant memory against other forms of traumatic memory prevailing within specific national contexts, or on the transnational stage. What is the crucial force of artefacts representing (migrant) traumatic memories as they interact with pre-existing narratives of traumatic memory? How can the personal nature of these migrant memories be seen to challenge memories of the past as defined by local, national or supranational narratives? How do minority memories of trauma encounter conceptions of supposedly ‘global’ traumatic memories such as the legacy of the Holocaust, which seem to prescribe a specific way of relating to this past? The conference will consider whether the concept of transcultural memory as a “lens of investigation” allows new insights into migrant memory, and, conversely, if the investigation of migrant memory can contribute to a definition of transcultural memory as tool of analysis.

Topics to be addressed may include, but are not limited to:

• Migrant memories as they appear in literature, visual arts, as well as in digital and audiovisual media;
• (Traumatic) migrant memory as counter-memory of the past;
• Frictions of interrelation between migrant memories and official national or supranational perceptions of the past;
• Transcultural migrant memory in comparison with global memories;
• The use of powerful global narratives (such as the Holocaust) in artistic expression of migrant memory;
• Methodological observations about the transcultural as means of investigating migrant memory;
• The change of migrant memories as they interact with existing memory narratives in their host countries;
• The reception of migrant memories in ‘host’ societies;
• Artistic expressions of migrant memories as demonstration of the global networks of remembrance and/or the “traveling of memories”;
• ‘Migrant’ character in cultural artifacts expressing the general rootlessness in the present ‘age of globalization’;
• The role of ‘place’ in the (re)creation of migrant memory? Do specific ‘places’ impact on these memories, or are they resistant to change?

 

Please send a 300-word abstract, including your name, the title of your paper, and your university, for a 20 minute presentation, to tnmigrationmemoryconf@gmail.com by Friday 27^th January 2017.

For information regarding the small travel contributions we can offer to participants, please contact us on the above email.