Taking place from 11-15 July 2022 in Roosta, Estonia, ‘Translating Memories in Literature, Film, Museums, and Monuments’, the Eastern European Memory Studies Summer School will combine keynote lectures, presentations, and field trips with the opportunity to present your research to a panel of academics and peers.
The ‘Translating Memories’ project focuses on how memorial forms and acts of memory are translated across, between and beyond post-socialist Eastern Europe, as well as how the arts and memory practices can potentially redraw boundaries within and beyond the region. Thus, invited experts studying media including literature, film, museums, and monuments will present on a wide range of forms, receptions, and transformations in the region from 1991 to the present day.
Possible topics include, but are certainly not restricted to, the following:
● the tensions between the local and the global in the production, circulation and reception of various acts of memory
● the aesthetic strategies and narrative and visual tropes employed by acts of memory to translate locally specific cultural and historical events for global audiences
● the intervention of aesthetic media of memory and curatorial practices in the politics of memory in Eastern Europe
● the use of archival materials and the role of archives in literature, films, museums and monuments, as well as the interplay between fact and fiction in remembering the past in these media of memory
We welcome applications from PhD students studying relevant topics in fields across the social sciences and humanities, including (but not limited to) literature, history, film studies, heritage studies, memory studies, and Slavic studies.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers
Zuzanna Bogumił (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Veronika Pehe (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Kevin M. F. Platt (University of Pennsylvania)
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (German Historical Institute Warsaw)
Mitja Velikonja (University of Ljubljana)
Programme
Monday, 11 July
09.30 Optional monument tour to Maarjamäe in Tallinn (meeting at Uus-Sadama 5)
13.00 Departure from Tallinn University to Roosta (meeting at Uus-Sadama 5)
14.00 Visit to the site of Klooga concentration camp
16.00 Arrival in Roosta
16.30-18.00 Keynote: Zuzanna Bogumił, Contested Past Commemorated: On the Postsecular Memory of Soviet Repressions in Russia and Eastern Europe
19.00 Dinner
Tuesday, 12 July
09.30-11.00 Panel 1: Remembering / Forgetting / Omitting 1
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-13.00 Keynote: Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Cultural Memory: How It’s Made?
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-15.30 Panel 2: Remembering / Forgetting / Omitting 2
15.30-16.00 Break
16.00-17.30 Panel 3: Texts, Practices, Identities
19.00 Dinner
Film Night
Wednesday, 13 July
09.30-11.00 Keynote: Kevin Platt, Post-Socialist Post-Colonies and the Ruins of Global History
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-13.00 Panel 4: Human Rights and Difficult Heritage
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00 Field trip to Haapsalu
19.00 Dinner
Thursday, 14 July
9.30-11.00 Panel 5: Visual Rhetoric and Transformation of Meaning
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-13.00 Keynote: Veronika Pehe, The “Wild 1990s” on Film and Television. Remembering the Postsocialist Economic Transformations in Central Europe.
13.00-15.00 Lunch
15.00-16.30 Roundtable: The Future of Memory Studies After the War in Ukraine
Speakers: Zuzanna Bogumił, Margaret Comer, Irina Paert
19.00 Dinner
Film Night
Friday, 15 July
09.30-11.00 Panel 6: Memories of Socialist Pasts
11.00-11.30 Break
11.30-13.00 Keynote: Mitja Velikonja, Yugoslavia after Yugoslavia – Graffiti about Yugoslavia in Post-Yugoslav Urbanscape
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-16.00 Travel to Tallinn
16.00 Graffiti Tour in Tallinn
Panel 1: Remembering / Forgetting / Omitting I
Discussant: Kevin Platt (University of Pennsylvania)
Rezeda Lykkorpi (University of Greifswald), “Königsberg Is Not Forgotten: Exhibiting German Past in Kaliningrad Museums”
Bernadette Ščasná (Tallinn University), “Memories of the Expulsion of Germans in Czech Literature Throughout Generations”
Aleksandra Guja (Jagiellonian University, Cracow), “Contemporary Visual Stereotypes of Jews in Poland and Their Historical Sources”
Panel 2: Remembering / Forgetting / Omitting II
Discussant: Zuzanna Bogumił (Institute of Archeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Alsena Kokalari (European University Institute), “Measuring Memory Museums in Central and Eastern Europe Countries: creating a context-dependent dictionary”
Kristina Zmejauskaite (Dublin City University), “A Walk Through Vilnius Now and Then: Soviet Memory in Public Spaces”
Aleksandra Kumala (Jagiellonian University, Cracow), “Unrecognized Victimhood. Homosexual Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps in the Right-Wing Media Narratives in Poland”
Panel 3: Texts, Practices, Identities
Discussant: Mitja Velikonja (University of Ljubljana)
Maria Plichta (University of Amsterdam), ““Fake Fog and Suspicious Doppelgängers: Conspiratorial Narratives around the Smoleńsk Catastrophe”
Carlos Eduardo Lesmes López (Tallinn University), “Documentary Film and the Narrativization of Memory”
Astrid Greve Kristensen (Sorbonne University), “Return and Returnees: Memory Quests”
Panel 4: Human Rights and Difficult Heritage
Discussant: Ene Kõresaar (University of Tartu)
Charley Boerman (Radboud University), “Human Rights as a Shared Past: Remembering the Holodomor Through Global Commemorative Practices”
Diãna Popova (Latvian Academy of Culture, Riga), “How to Interpret Difficult Heritage to Youth Audiences? Challenges and Opportunities for Future Research”
Hanna Aunin (Tallinn University), “Search for Recognition: Empathy Mode of Memory Transmission in In the Crosswind (2014)”
Panel 5: Visual Rhetoric and Transformation of Meaning
Discussant: Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (German Historical Institute, Warsaw)
Teisi Ligi (Tallinn University), “Performative Cinematic Acts of Form in Baltic New Wave
Documentaries”
Stanislav Menzelevskyi (Indiana University Bloomington), “Chornobyl [In]Visible: Transformation of Social Meaning and Visual Rhetoric”
Aynur Rahmatova (Tallinn University), “Living Ghosts and Children’s Stories: Reading Five Films on the Spanish Civil War”
Panel 6: Memories of Socialist Pasts
Discussant: Veronika Pehe (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Daria Gordeeva (LMU, Munich), “Socialist Past as a Battlefield: How to Analyse Historical Feature Films”
Filip Mitricevic (Indiana University, Bloomington), “We Were Celebrating Pig-Slaughter”: Oral History and the Alternative Spaces Within State Holidays in Socialist Yugoslavia”
Anna Greszta (University of Amsterdam), “Memory, History and Conspiracy in Russo-Ukrainian War”
Format
Invited experts will present keynote lectures on the latest developments in theory and practice in their respective fields, as well as providing students with a variety of case studies to consider. Field trips will provide real-world examples for students to analyze through the lens of what they learn throughout the week. Finally, students will be able to present their research to their peers and instructors, providing valuable presentation experience as well as the opportunity to gain detailed feedback from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary backgrounds. PhD work in progress will be presented in the form of panels of 3 students, who will each give a 15-minute talk that is based on their ongoing research, relevant to the theme of the summer school. Each panel will be chaired by a senior scholar who acts as respondent and kicks off the extensive Q&A. PhD participants are expected to pre-circulate their paper to the other members of their panel and to the organizers at least 3 weeks in advance of the school. They are expected to be in full attendance for the duration of the school.
Practical Information
Organizers
The summer school is part of the project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 853385). For more information see: https://translatingmemories.tlu.ee
Where?
The summer school takes place in Roosta, Estonia: https://www.roosta.ee
The participants are accommodated in shared cottages with limited single room/mezzanine options. The transportation from Tallinn, to and from the location, is organised by the summer school.
When?
Monday 11 July 2022, 9.00 a.m. – Friday 15 July 2022, 6.00 p.m.
Costs
The registration fee for the summer school is €100. A fee waiver may be requested in case of severe financial need. This fee covers a part of accommodation and transportation to Roosta. The rest will be covered by the organisers. Applicants are responsible for the costs of their transportation to and from Tallinn and accommodation in Tallinn (if needed).
Applications
Interested applicants should contact Anita Pluwak, (anitaw@tlu.ee) with a 300-word abstract for a 15-minute paper (including title, your name, and institutional affiliation), a description of your doctoral research project (one paragraph), and a short CV (max. 1 page), as a single Word or PDF document. We still have a couple of free places and we accept application until the places are filled, but not later than 1 April 2022.