Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference 2019

Submitted by Michael Neininger on
Residue and Remnants: (re)Presenting Cultural Memory, Contamination, and Destruction

Residue and Remnants: (re)Presenting Cultural Memory, Contamination, and Destruction

“Without remembrance and without the reification which remembrance needs for its own fulfillment and which makes it, indeed, as the Greeks held, the mother of all arts, the living activities of action, speech, and thought would lose their reality at the end of each process and disappear as though they never had been.”

– Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

As Hannah Arendt intimates, all action, speech, and thought are dependent upon the act of remembering. Indeed, without the remembrance of things past, the present becomes a time and space filled with anxiety, all the more so when the problems surrounding how and what to remember are considered at the level of culture. The interdisciplinary graduate student conference entitled “Residue and Remnants: (re-)Presenting Cultural Memory, Contamination, and Destruction” will investigate the complexities surrounding cultural residues pertaining to the reproduction and erasure of traditions, artistic practices, and mythologies, thus posing questions about what remains and how it has arrived. Answers to these questions have been offered from a multitude of disciplines including, but not limited to: sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political science, drama, history, psychology, comparative literature, philology, and media studies. What narratives and histories dominate the popular imaginary? How have they come to us? How have these legacies been written/performed/expressed? What are the influences that have shaped the stories we tell? What can we learn from that which has survived and where is the place for that which has been erased?

Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, April 5-6

University of Washington, CMU 202/204

Day 1

3:00-3:45 Check-in (Communications Building/CMU 202/204)

3:45-4:00 Opening Remarks

4:00-5:30 Keynote Panel

Odai Johnson – Eating the Ottoman: the persistent cultural memory of Crusader cannibalism (4:00-4:20)
Gary Handwerk – Modern Mythic Memory: Criss-Crossing Crusoe (4:20-4:40)
Liina-Ly Roos – The Not Quite Child: Proximate Migration and Transcultural Memory in Nordic Literature (4:40-5:00)

5:30-6:30 Dinner Reception

Day 2


8:00-8:45 Breakfast (Communications Building/CMU 202/204)

8:45-10:15

Panel 1: (Re)making Mythology

Moderator: Brad Harmon

Speaker 1: Connie Amundson, University of Washington, “Reimagining Nordic Mythologies of Healing”

Speaker 2: Liane Sponberg, California State University Long Beach, “Fierce Fairy Tales: Recycling and Rewriting Cultural Norms”

Speaker 3: Mariana Pini, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, “The Conservative Filtering of Classics: A Brazilian Case”

Speaker 4: Emma Murray, University of Victoria, “The Myth of the Heavenly Hundred: From Ordinary Ukrainians to Revolutionary Martyrs”

10:15-10:30 Break

10:30-12:00

Panel 2: RuiNation and Memory

Moderator: Rogerio de Melo Franco

Speaker 1: Brad Harmon, University of Washington, “Cinema After Auschwitz: Remnants of Nazism in Roy Andersson’s Guilty Welfare State”

Speaker 2: Adam Davis, University of California Davis, “TBD”

Speaker 3: Alexander Kofod-Jensen, Karlstadt University, “TBD”

Speaker 4: Braden Russell, University of Victoria, “The Pervasiveness of Austria’s First Victim Myth within National Holocaust Memorialization

12:00-1:15 Lunch

1:15-3:00

Panel 3: Memory and Mediation in Transnational Contexts

Moderator: Connie Amundson

Speaker 1: Sanjana Kumari, Ambedkar University Delhi, “With the Invisibilized, Wrinkled Residues: Beyond ‘Development’ by Coming Together in Abandonment, Death and Healing”

Speaker 2: Gustavo Segura, University of California Davis, “Remedying/Remediating the Past: Media, Memory, and the Case of Chile’s ‘Caravan of Death’”

Speaker 3: Ahmad Nadalizadeh, University of Oregon, “Rhythms of Memory: Towards a Poetics of Recollection in Mehdi Akhavan-Sales”

Speaker 4: Juana Torralbo, University of Missouri, “Genauso deutsch wie Özdamar und Tawada”

Speaker 5: Fillipe Augusto Galeti Mauro, University of São Paulo
and the University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, “Landscapes of Memory: Resonances of the Proustian Style in the Novels of Cyro dos Anjos, Jorge Andrade, and Pedro Nava”

3:00-3:15 Break

3:15-4:45

Panel 4: Performing Memory

Moderator: Matt Straus

Speaker 1: Carlos Salazar, University of Washington, “Gods, Monsters, and Lividness: The Caribbean Carnival as a Medium for Cultural Negotiation”

Speaker 2: Shadow Zimmerman, University of Washington, “The Invisible Impact of Menander and Residues of Character”

Speaker 3: Jonathan Rizzardi, University of Washington, “‘I’ll intermingle everything he does’: Othello’s Desdemona as a Paradigm for Early Modern Transnational Interconnectivity”

Speaker 4: Taylor Twadelle, University of Hawaii, “Art, Media and Assembly: Performing Historical Memory”

4:45-5:00 Break

5:00-5:45 Summary Roundtable

5:45-7:00 Closing Remarks & Reception (w/ wine, beer, and small plates)

Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, April 5-6

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