The fifth Mnemonics: Network for Memory Studies summer school

June 2-4, 2016, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Hosted by the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (HGMS).

The theme of the 2016 event will be “The Other Side of Memory: Forgetting, Denial, Repression.” The keynote speakers will be Berber Bevernage (Ghent), Jodi A. Byrd (Illinois), and Françoise Vergès (Paris). Submissions are open to all graduate students interested in memory studies.

Mnemonics is an international collaborative effort for graduate education in the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. Each year a different partner institution hosts a summer school for select students on a particular theme pertinent to the study of cultural memory. Panels of scholarly presentations by graduate students will be supplemented by professionalization workshops, cultural events, and opportunities for informal socializing. Three distinguished keynote lecturers will present new work and will engage with participants. Partners from the different campuses affiliated with Mnemonics will also be on site and will help in responding to and mentoring graduate students.

The chosen theme is of forgetting as a way of highlighting an essential, but often overlooked component of the dynamics of remembrance. As the pioneering memory studies scholar Aleida Assmann has written, “Memory, including cultural memory, is always permeated and shot through with forgetting. In order to remember anything one has to forget; but what is forgotten need not necessarily be lost forever.” Both Assmann and the anthropologist Paul Connerton point out that forgetting is not a “unitary phenomenon”: it comes in multiple forms, including those associated with traumatic events, post-conflict amnesties, and repressive state apparatuses. Furthermore, as Assmann and Connerton emphasize, there is also a positive side to forgetting: discarding the past can make possible new beginnings and assist in the overcoming of violent pasts.

The topic, “The Other Side of Memory: Forgetting, Denial, Repression,” will provide space for consideration of this variety of forms in individual and collective contexts as well as in theoretical reflection and concrete case studies. papers are anticipated on such topics as Holocaust and Armenian Genocide denial, migration and forgetting, nation building and selective remembrance, and trauma and repression, among other things.

In the months leading up to the conference, HGMS will host a reading group for students and faculty in Illinois on the theme of “forgetting” as a way of preparing the intellectual ground for the event. Information about the reading group will be posted on our Facebook page so that others will have the option of reading along.

Possible topics might include, but are not restricted to:

• philosophical approaches to forgetting (Nietzsche, Ricoeur, etc.)
• digital media and forgetting
• literatures of forgetting
• genocide denial and the politics of memory
• psychoanalytic approaches to forgetting, repression, and disavowal
• amnesty and amnesia
• productive forgetting and the arts of memory
• commemoration, counter-monuments, and forgetting
• state-sponsored forgetting
• minority histories and imperial amnesia
• silence(s)
• individual vs. collective forgetting
• non-sites of memory
• archival forgetting
• historical repetition and the consequences of forgetting
• embodied forgetting
• therapeutic forgetting

The Mnemonics summer school serves as an interactive forum in which junior and senior memory scholars meet in an informal and convivial setting to discuss each other’s work and to reflect on new developments in the field of memory studies. The objective is to help graduate students refine their research questions, strengthen the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of their projects, and gain further insight into current trends in memory scholarship.
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Each of the three days of the summer school will start with a keynote lecture, followed by sessions consisting of three graduate student papers, responses, and extensive Q&A. Participants are expected to be in attendance for the full three days of the summer school. In order to foster incisive and targeted feedback, all accepted papers will be pre-circulated among the participants and each presentation session will be chaired by a senior scholar who will also act as respondent.

​Where: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is located two and a half hours south of Chicago by car. It has its own small airport (CMI) and flights from Chicago on American Airlines take only 30 minutes. Urbana-Champaign is also accessible by bus or train from Chicago.

​When: June 2-4, 2016

​Costs: $200. The fee includes conference registration, a private bedroom and shared suite at the Illini Tower for four nights (June 1-June 4), and most meals. For those who do not require overnight accommodation, the fee is $50. Travel to Champaign-Urbana is not covered; prospective attendees are encouraged to check travel costs in advance. (UIUC students may attend for free.)

​Submission: Submissions are open to all graduate students interested in memory studies.

Send: A 300-word abstract for a 15-minute paper (including title, presenter’s name, and institutional affiliation), a description of your graduate research project (one paragraph), and a short CV (max. one page) as a single Word or PDF document to: mnemonics2016 [at] gmail [dot] com

Deadline: February 1, 2016

Notification of Acceptance: February 22, 2016

Deadline for submission of paper drafts: May 16, 2016

If you have any questions, please write to mnemonics2016 [at] gmail [dot] com

Mnemonics homepage: http://www.mnemonics.ugent.be/

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