15–17 March 2021 in Turku
29–31 March 2021 in Paris
In collaboration with The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights, and Conflict Prevention at the American University of Paris, we invite scholars, students, practitioners, and activists from all fields to take part in the Winter Symposium of the Nordic Summer University Study Circle Narrative and Violence.
This symposium will explore questions on the production, practice, and instrumentalization of violent narratives about racial, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, and political minorities and groups. While multiple theoretical perspectives will be included in both locations, the symposium will have a broader international focus at the American University of Paris and will facilitate discussions primarily pertaining to the Nordic and Baltic sphere at the University of Turku.
We are interested in bringing together international scholars from multiple disciplines in order to investigate the role of narratives as a resource for motivating, justifying, and rationalizing structural violence, discrimination, and even mass violence or genocide. How and why are such narratives produced and disseminated? Are there common themes or patterns across cultures and cases? How do they derive their power? Why do persons and social groups subscribe to them? Are certain groups or persons more predisposed to appropriating these narratives? Are there ways to dissemble them? In order to explore these questions, we welcome papers that examine the language of stigmatisation, pollution, and discrimination from broad historical and geographical perspectives. We encourage papers that address the influence of fictional and non-fictional representations, oral histories and legal proceedings as well as the work of activist movements that attempt to counter violent narratives and reflect on how to shape possible, multicultural, inclusive futures.
Lire la suite
