The Memory Group
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All graduate students in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are invited to participate in the Memory Group. Memory studies has been a rapidly developing field that has brought together scholars in History, Literature, Sociology, Media and Cultural Studies and a wide range of other disciplines over the last 20 years. It is an empirically rich and theoretically challenging field that has implications for methodology and the way in which sources and data are understood across the board in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The Memory Group is an interdisciplinary group of graduate students and faculty with research interests in memory, memorialisation, and related issues of trauma and nostalgia. The group aims to meet termly with meetings involving discussion of published (both recent and older) and unpublished work and formal presentations from experts in the field. 'If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems to be something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceble, so obedient - at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul! - We are to be sure a miracle every way - but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out.' Fanny Price in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park II.iv, (OUP, 2003) p.163. |
2023-24 Memorializing without war
6 December 2023 FAB 3.36
A discussion of the Grenfell Tower Memorial CommissionLink opens in a new window report of November 2023
2022-23 A Semblance of Normality
This academic year we have has a visitor to the group, Luciana Amormino Fonseca, from the School of Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil working on a thesis on Narratives of Memory.
14 March 2023
Discussing: Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory (2021)
17 January 2023
Discussing: Tim Ingold, 'Place and Space' and Part III, Humaning in of Life of Lines (2015)
22 November 2022
Luciana Amormino Fonseca, Memory and the City of Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais, Brazil
Wed 26 October 2022 The Interdependence of Past and Future: Discussing
Maria Mudrovcic , About Lost Futures or the political heart of history Historein 14, 2014
and Anibal Quijano, 'The return of the future and Questions of knowledge, Current Sociology, Jan 2002 v. 50 (1) 75-87
2021-22 Emerging from Lockdown
The Memory Group - Annual Presentation:
Prof Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez - migrant feminism
Tuesday March 15th 4.oo pm-5.00 pm On Teams
Following our first meeting this term we agreed that the dominant focus of our activity this year will be Memory and Migration - and some Method!
3.00 on Tuesday 2nd November. A discussion of:
2.00-3.30 Tuesday 12 October - The Memory Group Opening Session for the new academic year
As an intoduction to the variety of work undertaken in relation to Memory by members of the group, we start this term with three members presenting some of their most recent work. The meeting will be on Teams - if you would like to be added to the guest list, please contact: mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk
Milija Gluhovic (Performance and Theatre Studies) ‘Performance, Memory, Repair’
Maria Roca Lizarazu (Birmingham, German Studies) ‘Uncovering the Lost Archive of Labour Migration. Acts of Memory Citizenship in Deniz Utlu’s Die Ungehaltenen [The Indignant]’
Rodrigo Cañete (Hispanic Studies/ Performance and Theatre Studies) 'A Few Theoretical Considerations on How to Reframe Political Conceptualism When the Future Was Erased by AIDS (in Post-Dictatorial Argentina)'
2020-21 Memory under Lockdown
Sessions this year are held virtually in Teams - for details please contact mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk
Curating Memory
March 9, 2021 at 11.00am to 1.00 pm - The link to the meeting link is Here.
This workshop features contributions from our Colleagues in Chennai Centre for Memory Studies IIT Madras
Representatives of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge responsible for their current exhibition on Touch
And our own Hannah Ayres co-founder of queer/disrupt
This workshop will explore the ways in which curation operates in this double world of preserving /memorialising - and actively creating memories for others - visitors etc. With lockdown, and concerns for artefact preservation our engagement with objects has become increasingly visual and virtual in character. Part of the workshop's concern is to explore ways in which curation can extend into other dimensions of human experience and more actively engage participants in the processes of memorialisation.
Participants to Curating Memory are:
Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj are faculty coordinators from the Centre for Memory Studies, IIT Madras who have been working with Dr Ashok Maharaj and Ms. Lakshmi Deshpande, both from XR Lab, Tata Consultancy Services, India the industry partner in Chennai's Centre for Memory Studies. Dr Ashok Maharaj has MS and PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, along with being the Guggenheim Fellow with Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. He currently heads the XR Lab at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India. His research interests include spatial storytelling, digital learning ecologies leveraging AR/VR/MR, and affective computing. Lakshmi Deshpande leads Design at XR Lab, Tata Consultancy Services. She helps product teams view Extended Reality (XR) experiences through a human lens. A spatial storyteller, who creates compelling experiences through user empathy, she creates impact through design for the whole spectrum of immersive experiences from 360 spaces, AR, VR, MR to Digital Humans. She has a Master's Degree in Visual Communication from IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay, India.
Elenor Ling is Curator of Paintings, Drawings and Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and co-curator of The Human Touch. She has a particular interest in prints from around the globe and in histories and methodologies of collecting.
Suzanne Reynolds is Curator of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and co-curator of The Human Touch. She has published widely on manuscripts medieval and modern, and has long-standing research interests in the intersecting histories of visual culture, books and reading.
Hannah Ayres is a third year PhD student in the department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She is researching queer re/presentation in museums and how queer individuals create, critique, and internalise these re/presentations. She is broadly interested in queer history; public history; queer theory; memory studies; visual sociology; gender and social theory. She is also the co-founder and current co-convenor of queer/disruptLink opens in a new window.Referring to: https://www.museumoftransology.com/Link opens in a new window
The Recent Past
We began this academic year with an introductory session 26 October looking at Yoko Ogawa's Memory Police (2019) followed by a session drawing on James Tresilian's How you feel (2020) pp. 48-51, Eric Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance (1979), an image of 'The Disappeared' introduced by Rodrigo Cañete, and Ghristopher Griffin introduced The Caretaker's, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2010). The full album can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4Link opens in a new window. The Caretaker describes this project album as follows:
The Caretaker conjures a quieter, more introspective spirit, lost in his own mind amidst a low-lit labyrinth of ever-decaying and antediluvian shellac phrases. Sourced from a mysterious collection of 78s, these vague snippets of archaic sonics reflect the ability of Alzheimers patients to recall the songs of their past, and with them recollections of places, people, moods and sensations (source: https://thecaretaker.bandcamp.com/album/an-empty-bliss-beyond-this-worldLink opens in a new window)
There is also an interview with Leyland James Kirby (The Caretaker) where he discusses this project, memory and its disintegration, and responses to An Empty Bliss Beyond This World: https://thequietus.com/articles/07139-leyland-kirby-caretaker-interviewLink opens in a new window
Subsequently to this project, the Caretaker produced Everywhere at the End of Time (2016 - 2020), which is a series of albums seeking to explore memory loss/dementia/Alzheimer's Disease.
2020-21 Forthcoming events
Monday November 30 11.00-12.00am
A discussion with Chennai Institute of Technology Memory Studies Group featuring Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj. We will be discussing two texts:
Truman Capote's A Christmas MemoryLink opens in a new window and the Introduction to a special edition of Memory Studies (2016) 'Memory/Materiality/SensualityLink opens in a new window'
Monday 14 December 1.00-2.00
A discussion of Julian Barnes's novel The Sense of an Ending'
Monday January 25th 1.00-2.30
A discussion with Charles Fernyhough, University of Durham (Pschlogy) of his Pieces of Light: The New Science of Memory (2012)
The Memory Group will be collaborating with the History Departments session on 'Touch' (for which see https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/research/touch)
2019-20
Lock-down events
The Memory Group will hold a series of reading groups using Teams. If you would like to be included, please contact: mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk
13 July 2020 Rebecca Schneider, The past may yet have another future/Jean Amery At The Mind's Limits/ Jill Stauffer, Ethical Lonliness.
29 June 2020 Act of Killing II: 'Perpetrating Narrative: Metalepsis and the fact/fiction divide in Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing'/ Warren Crichlow, 'Perpetrating Narrative: Metalepsis and the fact/fiction divide in Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing '/ David Denny,' The Act of Killing : From Fever Dream to the Dream-Work ' / Irene Lusztig, The Fever Dream of Documentary: A conversation with Joshua Oppenheimer/ John Roosa, 'An Interview with Joshua Oppenheimer'/ Nick Fraser, We love impunity: The case of the Act of Killing/
9 June 2020 'Perpetrator Cinema' J. Oppenheimer's The Act Of Killing - Adam Tyson, 'Multiple Acts of Killing'/Bill Nichols: 'Irony, Cruelty, Evil (and a Wink) in The Act of Killing'/Mike Meneghetti, 'Irony, Cruelty, Evil (and a Wink) in The Act of Killing'/ Morag, Defining Perpetrator Cinema/
11 May 2020 'Talking to the perpetrators' Paul Henrickson, Sons of Mississippi / Rachel Buchanan, 'Why Gandhi doesnt belong at Eellington Railway Station'
27 April 2020 Sarah de Nardi, 'Haptic Memory' - An embodied approach to Second World War storytelling mementoes: Probing beyond the archival into the corporeality of memories of the resistance/ Maria Tumarkin, 'Crumbs of Memory: Tracing the 'more-than-representational' in family memory'
The Memory Lecture 2020:
'Human remains, the missing body and the South African memorial complex' - Professor Ciraj Rassool: director of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape.
Monday 17th Feb 2020: Lecture (17:00 – 19:00)
The Wolfson Research Exchange, Level 3, Seminar Room, The University of Warwick.
Memory Workshop
Tuesday 18 February (10.00-12.00)
Institute of Advanced Study, Zeeman Building, IAS Seminar Room, The University of Warwick.
‘Commemoration and Remains in Africa, Spain, and Eastern Europe post WWII’ With Ciraj Rassoool, Alison De Menezes, The University of Warwick and Dr Jenny Watson, The University of Edinburgh.
Memory Reading Group - please contact: Meryem.Choukri@warwick.ac.uk
2018-19
Attentiveness workshops: 1.-2.00 Humanities Studio
November 16 - A Mindfulness Workout: First Person Attending, Kitty Wheater (Oxford)
November 23 - Attentiveness and Education, Naomi De la Tour
18 January 2019: Lunch-time Talk: Bryan Cheyette (Reading) The Ghetto as a Travelling Concept
Wolfson Exchange 12.00-2.00
With Bryan Cheyette Workshop on ‘Unfenced Fields in Academia and Beyond: Jewish/Post Colonial/Memory Studies’ OC1.06
Attentiveness workshops
January 29 2019 5.00-7.00pm 3.41 Ramphal
Professor Holger Schulze (Copenhagen): What are Sound Studies. A Journey into the Historical, Anthropological and Political Aspects of Listening and Sounding
The paper will ask us to think critically about sound and listening, and how the sonic components of everyday experience in shifting environments, within different cultural media (film, radio, language) function, engage us and impact us, and about how we process them in all kinds of ways. It will interest colleagues from a wide-range of arts and social science disciplines - and you are all warmly invited. No tickets, free of charge!
Summer Term TBC - Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford) Cultural History of Attention
The 2019 Memory Lecture by Andrew Hoskins ‘War and Forgetting’
14th March 2019 5.00 Wolfson Research Exchange
Memory Masterclass with Andrew Hoskins
15th March 10.00-12.00 Wolfson Research Exchange: For access to the papers see here
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2017-18
Memory and Culture in Latin America
2-11 October 2018 (see here) or visit https://cultureofmemoryseminar.wordpress.com
Seminar: “The new Culture of Memory and Testimony in Latin America”
The 2018 Memory Lecture by Susannah Radstone: Hard Landings: Memory,
Place and Migration
29th October 2018 5.00 in the Wolfson Research Exchange
Memory Master Class with Susannah Radstone - Working with memory and place - 30th October 2018 10.00-12.00 in the Wolfson Research Exchange
October 24 Prof Stef Craps, Professor of English Literature
Director, Cultural Memory Studies Initiative
Ghent University
12.00 - 1.00 Bearing Witness to the Anthropocene Wolfson Exchange, Warwick Library
5.00-6.45 Workshop on Memory Studies, Wolfson Exchange, Warwick Library
Readings for the workshop:
and Sherman Alexie 'Inside Dachau'
Friday December 1, 2017
10.00-4.00, Wolfson Research Exchange
Workshop on ‘Modes of Attentiveness’: an exploration of concepts such as attentiveness, mindfulness, contemplation, immersion and slowness from a multi-disciplinary angle.
‘Modes of Attentiveness’
December, 1st 2017, WRE, Seminar Room 3
10.00 – 10.30 Morning Coffee and Welcome
10.30-11.30 Panel One: Attentiveness – Therapeutic and Pedagogical Perspectives
* Kitty Weather (Oxford): Therapeutic Perspectives
* Sarah Stuart-Brown: tbc
11.30-11.45: Learning to Pay Attention I: Mindfulness Meditation
11.45-12.45: Panel Two: Attentiveness in the Arts
* James Hodkinson (Warwick): Brian Eno
* Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford): Research Project on ‘Attention and Distraction’
12.45-2.00: Lunch
2.00-2.15: Learning to Pay Attention II: Brian Eno/Slow Filmmaking
2.15-3.15 Panel Three: Attentiveness - Philosophical Perspectives
* Tim Crowther (Warwick): tbc
* Hemdat Lerman (Warwick): Visual Attention
3.15-4.00 Roundtable Discussion and Afternoon Coffee: Discussion of Possibilities for Collaboration
TERM 2
Wednesday January 24, 2018
1.00-3.00 pm, Wolfson Research Exchange 1
Workshop on Memory and Imprisonment with Sarah Colvin (Cambridge) slides and Evi Girling (Keele) slides
Thursday March 1, 2018 and Friday March 2, 2018, Annual Memory Lecture and Masterclass
Prof Andrew Hoskins, Interdisciplinary Research Professor in College of Social Sciences - Global Security, University of Glasgow
March 1, 5.00 pm Annual Memory Lecture: ‘Forgetting War’, room tbc
March 2, 10.00-12.00 Memory Master Class, room tbc
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2016-17
June 23 10am-12.00 Oculus Building OC1.02
Workshop on Method and Memory,
Maria Roca Lizarazu "Beyond Postmemory? Renegotiations of Trauma in Contemporary Literature and Theory"
and Jarula Wegner, "Theorising Constellations of Memory"
Readings here (Hirsch) and either here Bond and Transcultural Memory or here (Spivak)
In association with the Connecting Cultures GRP we are happy to announce the third annual Memory Lecture and Masterclass:
Prof Ann Rigney, Utrecht: Topographies of Memory after the Nation
February 21st 5.00-7.00 Wolfson Exchange
The graduate masterclass will be 10-12 on Wednesday February 22nd in the Wolfson Exchange. Please register with T.Smith.2@warwick.ac.uk Reading for the class is available here.
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January 25th 5-7 pm - Fairy tales and folk memory - a discussion with Katherine Langrish, author of Seven Miles of Steele Thistles (2016) Wolfson Exchange
Wednesday 26th October 5.00-7.00 Wolfson Research Exchange
Exhibitions, Memorialisation and Impact: Doing What for Whom? A Discussion
With Alison Ribeiro de Menezes (Spanish), Fabienne Viala (Italian), Jo Garde-Hansen (Cultural Policy Studies), Charlotte Brunsdon (Film and TV), Helen Wheatley (Film and TV), Mark Philp (History), Sarah Shalgosky (The Mead Gallery), and others.
Wednesday 16th November 5.00-7.00 Wolfson Research Exchange:
Comedy and Memory with Bisha K Ali - comedian, writer, human - and, believe it or not, ex-Warwick economics student.
2015-16
Refugee memories
a workshop and discussion
Tuesday 7 June 2016, 2.00-4.30
Wolfson Exchange, Warwick University Library
With Reem Doukmak (Centre for Applied Linguistics) and Jonny Steinberg (University of Oxford)
Memory Master Class II: with Professor Aleida Assmann
Public Lecture: Transnational Memory and the Construction of History through Mass Media
24 Feb 2016, 5-7pm
Humanities Building (room 5.45)
All Welcome
A ‘transnational turn’ has been announced by historians and theorists in various subfields of cultural studies. The general challenge of the ‘trans’ is to go beyond national identification, investments and interests and to explore new forms of belonging, participation and cultural identification in a world characterized by dispersed and displaced populations with different historical experiences and trajectories. Looking beyond the border of nations is a promising methodology; but the term often covers up rather than uncovers important problems that are to be encountered in this new area of research. Given the growing impact of national history constructed in the mass media, this contribution will focus on the German Television Miniseries Generation War and its reception, asking whether it stimulates nationalistic narcissism or has the potential to re-image the national past in a more comprehensive European perspective.
Graduate Workshop on Transnational Memory
25 Feb 2016, 10-12 am
This workshop will offer graduate students working in the area of memory studies an opportunity to discuss the topic of transnational memory with Prof Aleida Assmann. Spaces are limited and registration is required for the workshop only. Please contact Ms Tracy Smith on t.smith.2@warwick.ac.uk by 12 Feb 2016.
The Memory Group: Thursday January 28 4.00pm - 6.00pm S2. 84
Graduate Presentations and Discussion
Nick Brown: The use of graves as markers of memory and memorialisation in book 23 of Homer's Iliad.
Madeleine Scherer: The reception of the Graeco-Roman underworld in the 20th century and its interpretation as a transnational cultural schema.
Fiona Farnsworth: The graphic narratives of Joe Sacco and the politics of witness, reportage and representation in zones of conflict such as Palestine and the Gaza strip.
Lillian Hingley: Theodor Adorno’s refusal to “overcome” the trauma of Auschwitz, the construction of a truly critical theory, and his inspiration of a more critical, psychoanalytic approach to reading literature.
Chris Davis:The intersection between personal memory and the language of memory through reflection on writing on the language of national memory and personal and traumatic memory. How much of one's personal remembering is unavoidably couched in the familiar language of memory?
Memory and Laughter with Alexis Dubus aka Marcel Lucont - stand-up comedian.
November 2015 26 2.-3.30
F1.10 (Science block opposite Library Rd entrance to Humanities).
Reading:
Reading Group: Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis, Wed 28 October 4-6.00 Room S0.09.
2014-15
14 May 2015 Profesor Astrid Erll, Public Lecture 5.00pm Wolfson Exchange, Warwick University Library
Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. She has worked on memories of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, British colonialism in India and the Vietnam war. She is general editor of the book series Media and Cultural Memory (de Gruyter, since 2004), co-editor of A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies (with A. Nünning, 2010), Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory (with A. Rigney, 2009), and author of Memory in Culture (Palgrave 2011)/ Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen (2005, 2nd ed. 2011), an introduction to memory studies. She is part of the editorial board of the journal Memory Studies (SAGE) and the book series Memory Studies (Palgrave).
15 May Graduate workshop. 10..00-12 Wolfson Exchange
Graduate students are inviterd to present their work briefly and to engage in discussion with Professor Errl in an open workshop on the contribution of Memory Studies to historical, literary and cultural analysis. Students should register for this event, with a brief statement of their project, with Tracy Smith, in the History Department (T.Smith.2@warwick.ac.uk)
May 14 and 15 will be a lecture and a graduate workshop with Astrid Erll, Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, and editor with Ansgar Nünning of A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies (de Gruyter, 2010).
19 February 3.00-5.00pm H3.03
Graduate Workshop -
with papers by:
Desiree Arbo (Classics and History): Remembering and re-writing exile in the works of José Manuel Peramás, S.J. (1732-1793)
Grace Huxford (History and IAS): The Korean War Never Happened”: Remembering ‘forgotten’ conflicts of the twentieth century
Frank Sterkenburgh (German Studies):Emperor William I's monarchical politics of memory, 1840-1888
Kate Willman (Italian): Uses of History in 21st Century Italian Literature.
- If you wish to be added to the mailing list for these events or to access resources from past meetings please contact mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk
Music and Memory 23/1/2015 11.00-2.00
The third Memory Group meeting on Friday January 23, 2015 11.00-2.00 will look at Memory and Music - with papers and discussion of the interaction between music and memory and memorialisation.
The session, which will begin with coffee and end with lunch, will combine a discussion of two papers on Music and Memory by Dr Katherine Hambridge (Warwick) and Dr Oskar Cox Jensen (King’s London, Music in London Project 1800-1850) with material circulated in advance. The second half of the session will address some of the different ways of thinking about the relationship between music and memory, with participants being encouraged to identify (and, if possible bring on CD) particular pieces of music or songs that seem to them to capture or trigger a particular memory, or perhaps a particular false memory. This is very much a discussion, the aim of which is to try to encourage reflection on the different dimensions of interaction between music and Memory, and to be entertained!
Papers available include:
Wednesday 19th November 4.00-6.00 (Week 8) venue - H0.44 Humanities Building: Memory: Migrations and Translations - a discussion of readings with Professors Alison Ribeiro de Menezes and Loredana Polezzi (Spanish and Italian). There are three pieces of preliminary reading in pdf format: Ribeiro; Polezzi; and Confino
Thursday 30th October 3.30-5.00 (Week 5) venue - WAO.15 Avon Building, Westwood: Memory and Theatre – a discussion of readings with Milija Gluhovic and Yvette Hutchinson (Theatre Studies, Warwick) (Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire).
Notes and reading relating to this meeting can be accessed by those registered with the Memory Group in the password protected page: 'Memory Resources for Students and Faculty'
Thurs 16 October at 4pm Carla Guelfenbein, an exile from the Pinochet coup in 1973 discussing writing and silence with Thomas Glave, a writer and gay rights activist from Jamaica. Also the Argentine film on the disappeared on Wed 22 October, at 6.15 in the Arts Centre, followed by Q&A with the director. This film has been re-released after 20 years and stars Vanessa Redgrave. Tickets are free: email M.Coletta@warwick.ac.uk.
2013-14
- 10am-2pm, 23 May 2014, Summer Term 2014
Institute for Advanced Studies, Millburn House, University of Warwick Science Park
Featuring:- Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen
Associate Professor, Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick
‘Beyond the Digital: Mediated repertoires of cultural memory capital’ - Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine
Senior Lecturer, Department of European Cultures and Languages, Birkbeck, University of London
‘Trauma and Nostalgia in Heritage Sites.’
- Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen