Call for papers

Jewish Experience and European Crises:

Negotiating Jewish-European Borders in History, Literature and Art

An interdisciplinary workshop

27-28 May 2014

University of Bergen, Norway

This workshop addresses the fractures and continuities of the historically shifting cultural, aesthetical and political borders between the Jewish and the non-Jewish communities in Europe, thereby addressing the Jewish contributions to the national and European self-imaginations. The concept of a common European identity developed through a number of conflicts and crises, redefining the imagined and physical borders between European and Jewish cultures. For centuries the Jews were depicted as non-European “internal others”, later on, in some cases, as incarnations of the European, for instance in terms of Central-European culture (Kafka, Freud, Mahler etc.) in the interwar period and after World War II. Many Jewish immigrants, however, would rather prefer the USA to Europe as their final destination country. In particular after World War II, many Jews considered Europe as an unsafe continent for their children. On the other hand, post-war European politicians and intellectuals have considered the memory and the reflection of the holocaust as a common European obligation, thus renegotiating the very concept of Europeanness. At the same time, the various European nations have chosen different strategies in the process of reflecting on their own Jewish history.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

The role of Jewish cultures in creating an image of Europe

Competing senses of belonging – Jews between national loyalties and transnational solidarity

Cross/Transnational or national stereotypes – imaginations of Jews and Roma people across Europe.

Enlarging the European space – Immigration and its contribution to European imaginaries

The Jewish-European heritage of humanism

Jewish contributions to regional and national identities versus internationalist Jewish socialist movements

Poetics of transgression: border crossing practices in European literaure and theatre

Topologies of exile:

Outsideness and heteroglossia in European immigrant literature

Literature and art as reflective mediations on Jewish identities

Literature and art as reflective mediations on European identities

Reflective Jewish identities: from religious to cultural heritage

Renegotiating the Jewish-European cultural symbiosis

Literature and art as politics of recognition

Renegotiating the Jewish past in European literature; figurations of „Mittel-Europa“ and Jewishness

The role of the Holocaust in the respective memorial cultures.

Writing after the Holocaust

Dealing with the Holocaust – regional differences as result of historical experience

Developments toward and challenges of the narrative of the Holocaust as a common European ethos.

Competition and collaboration among genocide victim groups: Jewish and Roma memorials and narratives.

Please send proposals (approximately 300 words) for 30-minute papers or presentations to helge.holm@if.uib.no and sissel.lagreid@if.uib.no by 20 April 2014.

We are looking forward to receiving your proposal.