Calendar

Staff from the School of Modern Languages and Cultures ran a series of events to mark the university’s 60th birthday and the 80th anniversary since the end of World War Two. Our theme of “Language Learners as Peacemakers” linked perfectly to our collaboration with Coventry Cathedral whose motto of peace and reconciliation drives all of their community engagement. We were delighted to produce a booklet of family friendly visitor activities and a tree of peace on this theme for visitors to the Cathedral during the summer holidays, and work with Coventry’s Young Poet Laureate Aamani Kanda from whom we commissioned a special poem “airplane brother” which introduced our schools poetry competition “Mother Tongue Other Tongue” exhibited with all our finalists across primary and secondary schools in the Chapterhouse. Finally, we hosted 2 evening talks delivered by two of our SMLC academics on their research on the Second World War and hosted a school’s event for 60 Year 9 pupils from Coventry schools in October. The students were able to reflect on the themes of peace and reconciliation through language learning with a series of language-based tasks and a creative challenge to propose and design a new piece of artwork to mark the link between Dresden and Coventry.

Talk outline

Eighty years after the defeat of National Socialism, one word still has the capacity to provoke heated debate across the political spectrum: “Befreiung,” or liberation. When Berlin announced a one-off public holiday to commemorate Germany’s “liberation from National Socialism and the end of World War II,” the right-extremist party Alternative for Germany led the dissenting voices. Had 8th May really marked the end of violence and the start of freedom for most Germans? Had Germany’s women truly encountered Allied soldiers as liberators and not aggressors? This talk is about the importance of language in allowing German women to tell their stories of defeat—on their own terms and for the purposes of reconciliation rather than propaganda.

**This talk will include references to wartime sexualised violence.

Further information can be found here.