Archives par mot-clé : Appels à contribution

Actualités scientifiques, Appels à contribution

New Jewish Museums in post-Communist Europe : Appel à contribution (revue)

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Les chercheurs Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (professeur à NYU et également “Program Director” pour l’exposition permanente du Musée d’Histoire des Juifs polonais à Varsovie) et Olga Gershenson (professeur à l’Université de Massachussetts-Amherst) lancent un appel à contribution pour un numéro spécial sur les nouveaux musées juifs dans l’Europe post-communiste. Elles espèrent notamment y inclure des articles concernant la Russie, l’Ukraine, la Hongrie, la Pologne, la République Tchèque, la Roumanie, la Moldavie, l’Allemagne de l’Est.  Les sujets attendus sont détaillés dans l’appel à contribution cité ci-dessous.

Les propositions d’articles (titre, résumé, biographie de l’auteur – le tout en anglais) sont à envoyer avant le 30 mars 2014 ; puis les articles seront à rendre pour janvier 2015.

Call for Paper

 

Post-Communist Eastern Europe is experiencing a museum boom, and Jewish museums and Holocaust memorials are among them. The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow and Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw are prime examples of this trend, but there are many others. For decades, the subject of the Holocaust, and Jewish history in general, were largely off-limits in the Eastern bloc. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and fall of the Berlin Wall, there is a revival of Jewish culture and institutions in Eastern Europe and growing interest in Jewish subjects on the part of non-Jews, paradoxically, in the near absence of Jews. New museums and memorials are part of this trend.

Some of these new museum projects are ambitious. They may be financed at a level of millions of dollars, from both private and public funds. They may be initiated and supported by local and international Jewish communities, as well as by local authorities. They often engage both local and international academics and exhibition designers. Their core exhibitions may present the full sweep of Jewish history in a given place, including the Holocaust and postwar period. They may start from a collection of objects or, in the newest and largest examples, create multimedia narrative exhibitions.

In light of these new developments, we invite submissions to this special issue on Jewish museums in post-Communist Europe that explore the place and meanings of such museums in Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova, East Germany, and beyond. Possible topics include:

  • Museums as agents of transformation in post-Communist societies, including their role in national narratives and civil society. What exactly constitutes a Jewish museum in post-Communist Europe? How do Jewish museums respond to the opportunities and challenges of the post-Communist period?
  • Evolution and transformation of Jewish museums that existed before and after World War II. What is their relationship to “new generation” museums and exhibitions?
  • Issues and debates regarding the relationship of the Jewish historical narrative to wider local, national, and international narratives in a museum’s exhibition. What is highlighted and what omitted? How does the exhibition deal with competing narratives? Who are the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes? Who tells the story for whom and who is in control of the narrative?
  • Relationship of Jewish museums to Holocaust history, memory, memorials, and commemoration. What does it mean to create Jewish museums, as opposed to Holocaust museums, memorials, and tolerance centers, particularly in the post-war, post-genocide, post-Communist era?
  • Issues of reception, including controversies and reactions in local Jewish communities, national and international media, and on the part of visitors and general public.
  • Jewish museums and their stakeholders – city, state, donors, Jewish communities (local, national, international), and audiences (local, Jewish, and international).
  • Poetics and politics of exhibitions – old and new approaches to exhibitions and their responsibility to those whose story they tell.
  • Collections: how they were formed, to whom the objects belong, and how museums deal with issues of provenance and restitution.
  • Museum architecture and location – site specificity, new architecture, adaptation of pre-existing buildings, with or without a connection to Jewish history.
  • Relation of Jewish museums to networks of Jewish heritage sites and routes linked to religious pilgrimage, Holocaust commemoration, and genealogical quests.

To initiate submission, please send a proposal, consisting of title, abstract, and author’s bio to the editors at brayndl@gmail.com and at gershenson@judnea.umass.edu  Proposal must be received via email no later than March 30, 2014. Approved proposals will advance to the next stage and will be expected to be submitted as completed articles in January, 2015. We encourage prospective authors to contact the editors with questions about submissions.

This special issue will also include book reviews on related subjects. Call for book reviews will be circulated separately.

 

Présentation originale de cet appel à contribution à retrouver sur h-net.

Actualités scientifiques, Appels à contribution

Italian Jews in Context: Relations, Exchanges, Networks : Appel à contribution

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En vue de la conférence “Italian Jews in Context: Relations, Exchanges, Networks“, qui se tiendra en mars 2015, le “Graduate Center” de la City University of New York et l'”Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies” de l’Université de Columbia lancent l’appel à communication proposé ci-dessus.

Les candidatures (résumé de 300 mots maximum et un CV, le tout en anglais) sont à soumettre avant le 21 mars 2014.

The CUNY Graduate Center and the Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies invite proposals for papers to be presented at a conference featuring new research on early modern and modern Italian Jewish life in relation to and in dialogue with the larger context of Mediterranean, European, and American Jewish history.

The conference will take place in March 2015.

This conference seeks to move beyond the dichotomy of “exceptionality” and “representativeness” engrained in much of the historiography on Italian Jewry, which views this minority either as an extraordinary case apart from the better known Sephardi and Ashkenazi examples or as a model of general Jewish history on a small scale.
Accordingly, the conference aims to showcase original research that situates the Italian Jewish experience within a trans-regional and trans-national context and that is mindful of the complex, and at times conflicting, set of networks, relations, and loyalties that characterized diasporic life from the 16th to the 20th century.

We welcome proposals focusing on the early modern and modern periods. Proposals may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

– Forms of connection and cooperation between Italian Jewish communal institutions and foreign or international Jewish bodies.

– The history of Italian merchant families and business firms and their economic networks.

– International matrimonial strategies of Italian Jewish families, and their changes over time.

– The circulation of ideas and texts, from Hebrew manuscripts to the interaction of the Italian Jewish periodical press with other European-Jewish periodicals.

– The role of Italian rabbis engaged in international Jewish disputes and questions, including Sabbateanism, Wissenschaft des Judentums etc.

– The relations between Italian Jews and Palestine, the introduction of Zionism in Italy, and the role played by Italy in the Alyah Beit.

– The relations between Italian Jews and the state of Israel, as well as the relations between Italian Jews and American Judaism.

Papers should not exceed 20 minutes. When submitting a proposal, please include a 300-word abstract explaining the presentation’s central questions, its innovations, and the sources upon which it is based, along with a current CV. Doctoral candidates are encouraged to apply.

Please send the proposals to : italianjewsNYC2015@gmail.com by March 21, 2014.

Actualités scientifiques, Appels à contribution

‘Survivors’ – Politics and Semantics of a Concept : Appel à contribution

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Le Centre d’études juives de Berlin-Brandenburg – en coopération avec le Centre pour la recherche sur l’antisémitisme (de l’Université Technique de Berlin) et le DAAD – lance un appel à contribution pour son workshop ‘Survivors’ – Politics and Semantics of a Concept qui aura lieu les 20 et 21 novembre 2014 à Berlin.

Le workshop est organisé par Alina Bothe and Markus Nesselrodt. Les chercheurs Atina Grossmann, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum et Anne Rothe y participeront.
Les candidatures doivent être soumises avant le 1er avril 2014 et doivent comprendre  : une proposition en anglais ou en allemand de 300 à 500 mots (pour une intervention de 20 minutes) et un CV académique.


Call for Papers

‘Survivors’ – Politics and Semantics of a Concept

The current understanding of the term ‘survivor’ in social and cultural studies includes various layers of  meaning. In the German discourse ‘survivors’ are often understood as those who were persecuted as Jews by the National Socialists in the years 1939-1945 and survived the war in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Those who were able to escape and survive in exile are classified as ‘refugees’ or ‘emigrants’. The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation applies a broader concept of the term ‘survivors’ which includes all Jewish interviewees regardless of the variety of their experiences. Both examples illustrate the impact of a collective attribution by others to the status of being a ‘survivor’. In addition to the already widely discussed categories of victims and witnesses the concept ‘survivor’ still needs further discussion.

Taking into account the multiple self-narratives of Shoah survivors opens new possibilities of understanding survival. The Jewish Displaced Persons in occupied post World War II Europe identified themselves initially as She’erit Hapletah, the ‘surviving remnant’ of European Jewry. Following this self-definition, all remaining European Jews belonged to this collective; a formulation that stressed unity after catastrophe and effaced the many differences in wartime experiences of survival. Those who survived the war as refugees or deportees in the Soviet Union also became part of the She’erit Hapletah when they were repatriated to their countries of origin, especially Poland, from where, finding only a “vast graveyard” and renewed antisemitism, many fled again. Even as they became the majority in the Jewish Displaced Persons Camps of occupied Europe, their specific experiences and memories were marginalized. Scholars have only recently begun to examine (and re-examine) the complex set of historical experiences and meanings attached to the the concept and definitions of ‘survivor’ and survival.

The workshop will focus on the different semantic and political meanings of the concept of ’survivor’ since World War II. It is necessary to critically analyze the different disciplinary, historical, and national understandings of the term. These questions are not new but need to be asked once again from a contemporary perspective. The political and social conditions that provide individuals a public forum for their memories will be considered as well. In many countries there has been a broadening of the concept of ‘survivor‘ over the decades, very often related to discussions about remembrance and restitution. What strategies and policies stand behind this change, and how does the semantic opening work in practice?

Possible topics for contributions include:

– juridical definitions of the term ’survivor‘ and the consequences ;
– other definitions of the term and their effectiveness ;
– Jewish and non-Jewish understandings of the ’survivor’ ;
– reparations and compensation for survivors ;
– gaps and taboos in survivor’s narratives and memories ;
– function and role of ’survivors‘ in national memorial cultures ;
– national and transnational conditions of the ’invention‘ of the ’survivor’ ;
– survivors as historians, writers, politicians ;
– the impact of gender on semantics and politics of the concept ;
– how does media affect the memory of survival ;
– how do current political questions and anxieties shape debates about definitions of survivors?

Confirmed keynote speakers for the workshop are:

– Dr Atina Grossmann (Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, DAAD Walter Benjamin Visiting Professor)
– Dr Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Director of the Berlin Institute of Technology Center for
– Dr Anne Rothe (Associate Professor of German, Wayne State University, Detroit)

The workshop will be held in German and English. Selected contributions will be published.

Funding will be available only on a limited basis and by request.

Please submit your proposal of 300-500 words for a paper of 20 minutes length together with your institutional affiliation and your academic CV by April 1, 2014 via e-mail to Alina Bothe: a.bothe@zentrum-juedische-studien.de.

Participants will be notified by May 1, 2014.

Actualités scientifiques, Appels à contribution

Littérature juive allemande après 1945 : Appel à contribution

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La “German Studies Association” (GSA) lance un appel à contribution pour sa conférence annuelle qui aura lieu du 18 au 21 septembre 2014 à Kansas City. Un de ses séminaire portera sur la littérature juive allemande après 1945.

Les candidatures sont à envoyer avant le 30 janvier 2014 à :

Lutz Koepnick, Chair (Vanderbilt University) : lutz.koepnick@vanderbilt.edu
Elisabeth Herrmann (University of Alberta) : elisabeth.herrmann@ualberta.ca
Emre Sencer (Knox College) : esencer@knox.edu


“German-Jewish Literature after 1945: Working Through and Beyond the Holocaust”

German Studies Association Annual Meeting, Kansas City, Missouri

Sept 18th-21st, 2014

Conveners: Helen Finch (University of Leeds), Katja Garloff (Reed College), Erin McGlothlin (Washington University in St. Louis) and Agnes Mueller (University of South Carolina).

Scholars interested in participating are invited to apply by January 30th through the German Studies Association website: https://www.thegsa.org/conference/documents/GSA_Seminars_2014.pdf

Seminar size: 12-15 participants

This seminar examines the creation of a ‘new’ German-Jewish literature in the wake of 1945. Its aims are twofold: to create a robust and close network of scholars working on related aspects of German-Jewish literature, and to create a volume examining the central questions to be discussed at the seminar in 2014. It is particularly concerned with the following intersecting set of questions:

German-Jewish literature?

o  How can we re-interrogate the terms ‘Jewish’ and ‘German’, particularly as these identities reconstituted themselves in the wake of 1945?

German-Jewish literature working through the Holocaust:

o  What relation did German-Jewish literature post-1945 bear to the tradition of German-Jewish literature that existed prior to the Holocaust?

o  How did German-Jewish literature by exiles relate to literature written by remigrants?

o  How does German-Jewish Holocaust literature relate to transnational questions about Holocaust literature, especially since this literature is by definition transnational? Here, we think for example, of Jean Améry’s correspondence with Primo Levi, or the ways in which Edgar Hilsenrath was received outside the German-speaking world.

German-Jewish literature beyond the Holocaust:

o  To what extent did the caesura of 1989 create a renewed impetus in German-Jewish literature?

o  Can we speak of generational discourses within German-Jewish literature? How has literature by Jewish immigrants to Germany after 1989 (such as Maxim Biller, Julya Rabinovitch) reconfigured the German-Jewish literary landscape in particular its relationship to the Holocaust and to the German past?

o  To what extent can we now speak of a transnational, hybrid or cosmopolitan German-Jewish literature?

German-Jewish literature in canon

o  To what extent has the Holocaust influenced the creation of a new “canon” of German-Jewish literature after 1945? What topics and authors became “canonized,” and which fell out of favor? What methodological tools, such as Bourdieusian “field” theory or the analyses of the German canon initiated by Saul and Schmidt (2007), can help us to interrogate the formation of such a canon and how its status might have shifted in the period 1945-present?

o  How does German-Jewish literature relate to Jewish literatures outside Germany and in other languages? Does literature written in the German language have an uncomfortable relationship to post-war Jewish literatures?

o  How does German-Jewish literature interact with the wider canon of post-1945 German-language literature?

o  How has German-Jewish literature travelled, transferred or been re-mediated in the digital age?

The seminar will meet three times over the three days of the conference.

Participants will be asked to read pre-circulated position papers of ca. 1000 words each, sent by each of the participants one month in advance of the conference.  Suggested readings will be distributed to all participants in early February.

Participants will be asked to submit their position papers by July 1, 2014, giving the convenors time to read and comment on these initially. Position papers will be distributed to all participants by August 1, 2014, along with a proposal for a volume based on the submissions.

The first seminar will be dedicated to a discussion of the readings and the key questions arising from the topic. The subsequent two sessions will be dedicated to reading and discussion of the position papers. The final session will also discuss the volume to emerge from the seminar, including prospective publishers.

Actualités scientifiques, Appels à contribution

“Disturbing Pasts” : Appel à contribution

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Disturbing Pasts : Reverberations of the Second World War in Europe after 1945

Le groupe de recherche “Reverberations of War in Germany and Europe since 1945”  (sous la direction de Pr. Mary Fulbrook et de Dr. Stephanie Bird de l’UCL) de l’University College London (UCL) lance un appel à communication pour la conférence “Disturbing Pasts : Reverberations of the Second World War in Europe after 1945” qui aura lieu à Londres les 3 et 4 juillet 2014.

Les propositions d’intervention (texte de 400 mots en anglais, accompagné d’une courte biographie) sont à soumettre avant le 1er décembre 2013. Voir la fin de l’appel à communication pour plus d’informations.

Call for papers

This conference sets out to explore the complex and diverse reverberations of the Second World War after 1945. The notion of  “disturbing pasts” refers to the experience of war and violence. But the aim is to understand how and why these experiences continue to disturb a later present, and how some people later disturb an apparently dormant
past. The focus is on conflicting, unexpected and often dissonant interpretations and representations of these events among both those who were the witnesses, victims and perpetrators of these events and among different communities in the generations that followed. On a theoretical level, therefore, one objective of this conference is to raise challenges to the widely used and yet under-theorized concept of “collective memory”.

For the purposes of this conference, “disturbance” is addressed on three different levels which interrelate in what might be called a “dialectics of disturbance”:

1- Those aspects of the past that remain disturbing, however hard people try to repress, forget, contain or silence this past;
2- The ways in which people later actively ‘disturb’ this past; processes of confronting, interacting and dealing with the past, that in turn affect and alter how it is perceived and what its implications are for a later present;
3- The often disturbing ethical questions raised in relation to the role of the analyst, historian and writer confronting this past.

We invite submissions that address one or several of the issues relating to disturbance, including but not limited to the following subjects:

– TRANSMISSION: How are experiences of war and violence transmitted between and across communities and generations?
– EMBODIMENTS: How were the experiences of war and violence and their memories inscribed onto the human body? How is the body used to make sense of or deal with these experiences, whether in daily life or in artistic interventions?
– REPRESENTATION – How are the experiences of war and violence represented in various media (films, literature, memorials, autobiographical accounts, press) and what is the wider impact of these representations on changing social perceptions?
– DISPLACEMENT AND IDENTIFICATION: How did people interpret and deal with the experience of losing their home and making a new one elsewhere?
What roles do place/space play for identification and identity construction?

Preference will be given to proposals adopting interdisciplinary, transnational or comparative approaches and/or developing distinctive theoretical perspectives.

Please submit a 400 word abstract to :

Dr Julia Wagner j.wagner@ucl.ac.uk
and Dr Christiane Wienand c.wienand@ucl.ac.uk

before 1st December 2013.

Please also include a brief biography, as well as details of current institutional affiliation, and email address.

Successful applicants will be notified by 15th January 2014.

Limited funding for the cost of accommodation and travel is available for those within Europe only. Applicants from overseas should bear in mind that they will need to apply for alternative sources of funding to cover their travel costs.

Papers will be pre-circulated. It is envisaged that a selection of conference papers may be published.