Witnessing through Literature and the Arts: A Transdisciplinary Symposium
Deadline Expired on December 31, 2023
The changing concept of “testimony” has become increasingly central to understanding forms of social and political violence. As the notion of “machine testimony” evolves in the era of AI, how can human witnessing continue to enrich the analysis of our transformative realities across disciplines and cultural contexts? Witnessing can also help address socio-cultural crisis (ecological, political and migratory, gender- based violence, COVID19- pandemic), as it is dealt with in literature, film, and the arts. The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, the Center of History, and the Institute for the Arts & Creation at Sciences Po are co-sponsoring a symposium on May 30-31 at Sciences Po in Paris, investigating how the uses, targets, and moral responsibilities of witnessing have shifted in a context where cultural manifestations often blur the boundaries between journalism and literature, historiography and fiction writing, or judicial claims and forms of artistic performance. How do testimonial works circulate across linguistic and cultural boundaries, and what does their translation entail? How do audiences, whether ordinary readers and spectators, editors, historians, or scholars of literature, film, and the arts, receive these hybrid testimonies?
The organizers welcome proposals for papers and panels from the OSUN community that analyze the idioms, epistemologies, and temporalities of testimony through literature, film and/or the arts, and propose a critical reflection on how testimonies can be apprehended across cultures and disciplines. We encourage the adoption of perspectives that respect the specificity of testimonial practices, uses, and objects. We will also consider current forms of production of life stories, their modes of sharing, archiving, and publication, through the use of old and new media, including digital and analog forms of writing, photographs and video, epistolary exchanges, newspapers, literature, theatre, film and the arts, with an emphasis on the fundamental role that the creation of archives and memory-making play across our societies, from a political and ethical standpoint.
This in-person event aims to bring together scholars and researchers in the humanities, history, the social sciences, human rights, and the arts, as well as “witnesses” from the artistic, judicial, and literary arenas who might also stand at the intersection of fields and postures.
“Witnessing through Literature and the Arts: A Transdisciplinary Symposium” will be held at Sciences Po’s Center for History in Paris, on May 30-31, 2024, in English. Please use the link below to submit abstracts of a proposed 20-minute presentation along with a short biographical note.
Deadline to apply is Sunday, December 31
Cross Reference: Call for Proposals, Call for Submissions,Opportunities,Experimental Humanities