Conference: "The Role of Memory in the American Construct"

IAAS Postgraduate Symposium - “Re-memory” and “Disremembering”: The Role of Memory in the American Construct

Irish Association for American Studies
contact email: iaas.symposium@gmail.com

IAAS Postgraduate Symposium
Saturday 29th January 2011
Location: Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD, Dublin, Ireland.

Call for Papers

“Re-memory” and “Disremembering”: The Role of Memory in the American Construct

Memory, (both collective and individual), and memolialisation have an international legacy of shaping identity constructs, impacting upon reactionary politics and re-conceptualising history in accordance with changing social mores. In the United States, choosing what to preserve in collective and individual memory (and perhaps more significantly, what not to preserve and/or commemorate), map a national history of conflict and heroism, despair and hope, decline and renaissance. America’s cultural memory has also been partly shaped by the idea of community. This is reflected in its diverse topography; the collective memory of the small town communities and subjective memory of the frantic, multicultural cities have each, in different ways, impacted on how America has come to define and understand itself. Remembering and choosing not to remember in the United States have, then, been instrumental in surviving trauma and in celebrating achievement, though the suggestion that the past can “infect” the present fosters a tendency to bury the darker aspects of America’s remembrances.

Postgraduate students of all disciplines within the field of American Studies (including literature, film, history, geography, philosophy, visual arts, performance arts, new media, politics, sociology, cultural studies, ecology, law, economics, and international relations) are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers in the area of American studies, with possible topics including but not restricted to:

- (Re)-Constructing National Identity
- Conflict resolution
- Problems within (and without) of Cultural Diversity
- Representations of Gender
- Representations of Race
- Historical interpretation and Periodisation
- (Re)-Configuring America’s Collective (Re)Memory
- American Exceptionalism
- The Hyphenated Identity

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be emailed to the IAAS Postgraduate Caucus Co-Chairs:
Louise Walsh (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD) and Kate Kirwan (University College Cork) at iaas.symposium@gmail.com
Please note that you must be a member of the IAAS to participate; see membership form attached.

DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: FRIDAY 31st DECEMBER 2010

Irish Times on Garzón

This blog is quickly becoming a Baltasar Garzón blog. Certainly, when I created it, I did not intend for it to become one. However, at the moment, I am looking for a place to archive articles from the English-speaking press on the Garzón case. Here is the latest one, from The Irish Times.

Key phrase: "it is not only this controversial investigating magistrate who will be on trial in the coming months. It will be Spain’s political system itself, and the problematic legacy left by the Franco regime."

The Irish Times - Thursday, May 20, 2010
Baltasar Garzón

THE ROLLERCOASTER career of Spain’s so-called “star judge”, Baltasar Garzón, has hit a new low with the decision of the General Council of the Judiciary to suspend him from professional duties last week. The case that led to this suspension concerns his investigations into the crimes committed under Gen Franco’s 40-year dictatorship during and following the 1936-39 civil war.

The Supreme Court argues that he did this in the full knowledge that a 1970s amnesty law protects the perpetrators of human rights abuses under that dictatorship. He is charged with perversion of justice at the Supreme Court on this and two other counts. But his supporters argue that he is really being prosecuted for highlighting an uncomfortable reality – modern Spanish democracy is built on a dubious political deal, euphemistically known as “the pact of forgetfulness”, between the heirs of the dictatorship and a majority of democrats. So it is not only this controversial investigating magistrate who will be on trial in the coming months. It will be Spain’s political system itself, and the problematic legacy left by the Franco regime.

The separation of powers between executive, legislature and judiciary is a key democratic principle, but all three cases against Garzón reveal a dangerous degree of politicisation in the Spanish courts. It is tempting to paint Garzón as the innocent victim of such political intrigue. However, this unpredictably partisan figure often appears to be its creature as well as its current target. His fatal error may have been to antagonise all political factions over his 30-year tenure as a senior investigating magistrate.The highs in his professional life have certainly been spectacular. He is best known abroad for his unprecedented attempt to extend the reach of international human rights law.

But his extraordinary achievements have been tarnished by his tendency to exceed his legal powers to get results. This has been equally evident in many high-profile cases: his ruthless pursuit of radical Basque political parties and media; of drug barons; and, most recently and now also the object of a Supreme Court case against him, of corruption in Spain’s biggest opposition party, the right-wing Partido Popular (PP). The flaws in his professional practice might be forgiven if his trial brings about judicial reform and an end to Spain’s amnesia about the dictatorship. But this patently ambitious man has too few friends left in high places for this to be a likely outcome.

Conference in Ireland: "Women's Memory-Work" -- Marjorie Agosín, Others to Speak

From: U of Penn CFP

“Women's Memory-Work:Gendered Dilemmas of Social Transformation” 24-26 August 2010 University of Limerick, IRELAND

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “Women's Memory-Work: Gendered Dilemmas of Social Transformation” 24-26 August 2010 University of Limerick, IRELAND

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
• MARJORIE AGOSÍN, Professor of Spanish, Wellesley College, USA
• PUMLA GOBODO-MADIKIZELA, Professor of Psychology, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• MARY L. KELLER, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Wyoming, USA
• MARY NASH, Professor of Contemporary History,University of Barcelona, Spain

The 3-day international conference Women's Memory-Work: Gendered Dilemmas of Social Transformation seeks to explore women-centered expressions of historical experience as fertile ground for cultural agency and social transformation in national and transnational socioeconomic and political arenas. Inspired by the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820, which call for a gender-sensitive implementation of national stability in peacekeeping operations, this conference invites the participation of scholars, activists and artists whose work addresses women’s engagement with the public memory of nations emerging from conflict and belonging to the class of “transitioning democracies.” At the same time, the conference intends to generate a larger dialogue that includes insights associated with women’s production of and participation in public and commemoration rituals in polities that are beyond the “transitioning” phase of democratic development, but which remain entangled in dilemmas of uneven historical and political representation and economic/territorial disparities.

The central questions the conference will be exploring are:

• What are the politics and ethics of producing and reproducing gendered memory-work? Who can participate? Who is excluded? What are the critical variables of potential alliances? Where do obstacles/limitations lie?
• In what ways might we be able to re-read traditional performances of womanhood, associated with upholding conservative social values of kinship and nationhood (among others), so as to reassess their potential participation in a radical politics/ethics of remembering, but also of envisioning future paradigms and material practices?
• How do women’s memories of traumatic repression and/or dogged dissidence participate in the historical imaginary and political vision of cultural identities and transitioning democracies?
• What are the challenges we face in building bridges across local gendered activism and international discourses of human rights and law? And how may we insist on the importance of gendered memory-work without re-inscribing the conceptual boundaries we seek to undermine?

This project is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Irish Government. As a transnational and multidisciplinary project, the conference aims to cover a wide range of disciplines—anthropology, geography, political philosophy, law, history, religion, sociology, psychology, literature, fine arts and cultural studies at large. We welcome proposals for papers in topics that include, but are not limited to:

• Gendered memory and political/cultural subjectivity
• Female consciousness and larger social subalternities (racial, ethnic, sexual, etc)
• Women’s cultural/political participation in peace processes
• Gendered politics/ethics of witnessing and testimony (“traumatic” or otherwise)
• Women’s rights and human rights
• Women’s self-referential narratives (autobiography, memoir) and memory performance
• Women’s agency beyond alterity
• Gendered labor and ecocriticism
• Women and the “war-story” (official or sectarian)
• Gendered models of reconciliation/forgiveness/healing
• Gendered dilemmas of redressing the past, seeking justice/peace
• Gender as/and strategic essentialism(s)

Please submit a 300 word abstract for a 20-minute presentation by April 16, 2010 to womensmemory@ul.ie.
All proposals will receive acknowledgement of receipt within a week from the closing date, and a final reply as to the acceptance of the proposal by May 7, 2010. If an abstract is accepted for the conference we request that a full draft paper is made available to the conference committee by July 31, 2010. A selection of papers from the conference will be published.
We also welcome thematic panel proposals (maximum 4 speakers).

Please submit the abstract or panel proposal with abstracts in Word or RTF formats along with the following information:
1. Name of author(s)
2. Affiliation
3. Position
4. Contact information
5. 1-page CV
If you have questions about the conference or about submitting a proposal please direct them to Emma Leahy— emma.leahy@ul.ie

Joint organizing chairs:
Cinta Ramblado—Lecturer in Spanish, University of Limerick
Yianna Liatsos—Lecturer in English, University of Limerick

To Download Call For Papers please visit http://www.ul.ie/isks/news.html