The Department of Slavonic Studies is helping sponsor the international conference 鈥楶laces of Amnesia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Forgotten Pasts鈥�. The event will feature over 70 presenters from 20 countries who will explore how societies forget, with particular attention to historico-cultural contexts in Russia and Central Europe.
The conference seeks to develop a dialogue between subject experts, established scholars and young researchers, who will examine the ways in which historical events, people, places and cultural texts can escape representations of the past. It seeks to establish whether specific sites can be viewed as loci of forgetting or, recalling and critiquing Pierre Nora's concept of lieux de m茅moire, as places of amnesia.
鈥楶laces of Amnesia鈥� focuses on the following general questions: How do the intersections of personal biography with historical events influence the way in which social groups remember and forget? What happens to the knowledge of events when there are no witnesses left? How do ceremonies and public events filter memory and amnesia?
The programme of the conference, which is subject to change, can be found in pdf format . It will feature two keynote speakers:
- 5th April 鈥� Professor (UCLA/University of Pisa) on Unintentional Revelations. Rescuing the Past, Obliquely.
- 6th April 鈥� Dr (海角社区) on The Inside and the Outside. Can the Human Body Be a Place of Amnesia?
The conference is organised by , PhD Candidate in Slavonic Studies; , PhD Candidate in Architecture (海角社区) and Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography (Oxford); , PhD Candidate in Italian; and , PhD Candidate in Anthropology. It is organised under the aegis of the Department of Slavonic Studies at the 海角社区, with funding from the School of Arts and Humanities, 海角社区 and the Centre for East European Language Based Studies (CEELBAS).
