The (In)Visibility of War in Literature and the Media
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Research Centre for Communication and Culture
LISBON, 7-9 MAY 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS
The conference wishes to address the visibility of war in the media and in literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. Either as a visible or a latent event, as a singular experience or as invisible discourse, war has shaped the social construction of modernity and influenced cultural and political production. The discourse of war as mediation is indeed a site of contention, where the narrative of the nation clashes with the individual rights and exerts pressure upon the subject of the narrative/reporting, thus affecting the substance of narration. This primal event, as modernist rhetoric claimed, was on the one hand aesthetically inspirational and culturally productive, and on the other ravaging and destructive. In fact, war is deeply intertwined with representation. On the one hand, as an exceptionally violent event, war challenges the work of representation. On the other, the work of representation is structurally supported by conflict and antagonism.
Focussing on the visuality of war, on the one hand, and on its discursive dimensions on the other, the conference wishes to address both the visible and the hidden discourses of war and the pervasiveness of this rhetoric in non-warring situations, such as the economy, the media or politics. It also aims to address the ways in which war affects, constrains and constructs subjectivity, be it the collective subjectivity of nationhood, or the individuality of warriors, victims, reporters and artists.
Papers are invited on the following themes:
1. Visible Wars
- The representation of war in literature, film and other media.
- Reporting war: issues and debates.
- Censorship and media incitement.
- Commemorating war: memorials, parades, exhibitions, cemeteries, battlegrounds, ruins.
- The visuality of war: war as spectacle.
- Structures of antagonism: friend/foe, soldier and victim.
- War as a media event.
- Religion and sacrificial violence.
- Colonial Wars and (post)colonial subjects.
2. Invisible Wars
- Remembering conflict.
- The law of war.
- Spectacles of surrender.
- (An)Other war: sex, race and identity in battle.
- The rhetoric of war.
- Hidden wars: spying, conniving, negotiating.
- Hyper-wars: Virtual reality and gaming
- Silent wars: trauma and PTSD.
- The war within: homecoming and the homefront.
- War and the modern project.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Anton Kaes (UC Berkeley)
Andreas Huyssen (U. Columbia)
Confirmed Guest Speakers:
Peter Geimer (ETH-Zurich)
Robert Doran (Rochester U. New York)
Elisabeth Bronfen (U.Zurich/NYU)
Helena Buescu (Universidade de Lisboa)
Fernanda Gil Costa (Universidade de Lisboa)
António Sousa Ribeiro (Universidade de Coimbra)
Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (Universidade de Coimbra)
Roberto Vecchi (Università di Bologna)
David Slocum (NYU)
Deadline for submissions: December 30, 2008
Please send a 200-word abstract and a short vita to cultureandconflict@fch.lisboa.ucp.pt
For more information: Research Center for Communication and Culture
Organizing Committee:
Isabel Capeloa Gil
Adriana Martins
Maria Alexandra Lopes
Ana Paula Rias
Carlos Capucho
Inês Espada Vieira
Teresa Ferreira
Diana Gonçalves
CECC - Research Centre for Communication and Culture
II CECC Conference on Culture and Conflict
Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Palma de Cima
1649-023 Lisboa - PORTUGAL