Call for Presentations
The Testimony: Memory, Trauma, Truth, Engagement Project (2nd Global Meeting)
Saturday 11th July – Monday 13th July 2015
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
The meeting seeks to examine, assess and explore the multiple uses and contexts in which testimony finds a voice. It takes for its theme Testimony: Memory, Trauma, Truth, and Engagement. Why testimony? How is it defined? How is testimony used in contexts such as legal, restorative, pedagogical, artistic, clinical, to name a few? Why does it continue to thrive and evolve in the twenty-first century and does it, or does it not, differ from earlier modes, times, cultures?
Testimony encompasses a diversity of expression and representation—from oral to written as well as nonfictional to fictional. Testimonial production also covers a diverse range of topics and practices, including human rights and storytelling; trauma and memory; ethics, witnessing, redress, reconciliation; narrative therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, and critical pedagogy, among others. It is undeniable that testimony implies a spectrum of disciplines, conventions and practices, art forms, and embraces a broad range of geographical and historical contexts.
We therefore welcome proposals that speak to the diversity and varied approaches to testimony and its engagement. Proposals may address, but are not limited to the following themes:
- Purpose and function of testimony: activism, denouncing human rights abuses, social justice education, healing and recovery, etc.
- Practices of testimony: legal, legislative, clinical, pedagogical, religious, artistic, performative, etc.
- Modes of testimony: written and oral accounts, film, media, music, photography, capacity for fiction to reveal truth, life writing genres, performance, architecture, museums, rituals
- Legacies of trauma and testimony: cultures of acknowledgement, cultures of redress, truth and reconciliation commissions, survivor groups, memorialisation, haunted geographies, spectral spaces
- Technologies that enable/disable testimony: Social media, Internet, digital archives, photoshop and other means of manipulating the visual/narrative record
- Impact of gender, race and class on individual and collective experiences with trauma, memory and testimony; collective testimony
- Ethics and reception of testimony: factors that influence the believability of a witness; false memory, amnesia as self-defense mechanism for dealing with trauma; effectiveness of testimony, etc.
- Economics of trauma and memory: tourism, self-help industry, exploitation and commercialisation.
The Steering Group welcomes the submission of proposals for short workshops, practitioner-based activities, performances, and pre-formed panels. We particularly welcome short film screenings; photographic essays; installations; interactive talks and alternative presentation styles that encourage engagement.
What to Send:
Proposals will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 13th March 2015. If a proposal is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 22nd May 2015. Proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; proposals may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Testimony2 Proposal Submission
All abstracts will be at least double blind peer reviewed. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs:
Cristina Santos, Adriana Spahr, Tracy Crowe Morey: ssc@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: testimony2@inter-disciplinary.net
The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.
Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.
For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/hostility-and-violence/testimony/call-for-presentations/
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.
