Witnessing through Literature and the Arts:
A Transdisciplinary Symposium
May 30 & 31, 2024
Sciences Po, Campus de Paris
1 place Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin
Widely theorized regarding memories of 20th century events of mass-suffering, the concept of “witnessing” can also help, in the light of a sustained sentiment of crisis, readdress current socio-cultural issues as they are dealt with from literature, film, and the arts."Witnessing through Literature and the Arts: A Transdisciplinary Symposium” will bring together scholars and artists to analyze the new idioms, epistemologies, and temporalities of testimony through literature, history, film, and the arts, proposing a critical reflection on how testimonies can be apprehended across time, cultures, and disciplines. This international gathering features talks by Alicia Partnoy, a US-based writer and survivor of the Argentine genocide, and French-Rwandan writer Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse. Organized by Profs. Frédérique Leichter-Flack from CHSP, Paris, and Patricia López Gay from Bard College, New York. Co-sponsored by Centre for History at Sciences Po, OSUN Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, and Sciences Po’s Institute for the Arts and Creation.
Thursday, May 30
1:45 pm Welcome and Opening Remarks
2-4 pm Panel I- Narratives of Witnessing: Intersections of History, Testimony, and Memory in Genocide Studies
Chairperson: Larissa Muraveva (Bard College Berlin)
Boris Adjemian (CRH-EHESS), “Early Narratives on the Armenian Genocide: Aram Andonian, Writer and Witness”
Judith Lyon-Caen (CRH-EHESS), “What does form testify to? Epistemologies of Testimony among Holocaust Survivor-Historians”
Frédérik Detue (CTELA-Univ. Côte d’Azur.), Charlotte Lacoste (CREM-Univ. Lorraine), Judith Lyon-Caen (CRH-EHESS): “On Interdisciplinarity and Testimony”
4:30-6 pm Artist Address
A Dialogue with French-Rwandan writer Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse: “Reclaiming One’s Own Survival Story”
Welcome Drinks Reception
Friday, May 31
10 am-12:30 pm Panel II- Testimony through Film, Literature, and the Visual Arts:
Witnessing Pandemics and Conflict
Chairperson: James Harker (Bard Berlin)
Thibaut Boulvain (CHSP, Sciences Po), “The Spanish Flu: A Quiet Pandemic”
Laura Kunreuther (Bard College, New York), “Earwitnesses: On the Labor and Testimony of Humanitarian Interpreters”
Amir Moosavi (Rutgers University-Newark), “Warfront Apocrypha: The Dead, Desertion, and Dystopia”
Patricia Zalamea (Univ. of Los Andes) and Helena Alviar (Ecole de droit, Sciences Po), “Bearing Witness: Transitional Justice and Land in the Work of Delcy Morelos”
12:30-2 pm Lunch Break
2:30-4:30 pm Panel III- Auto/Fiction, New Media, and Testimony
Chairperson: Laura Kunreuther (Bard College New York)
Larissa Muraveva (Bard College Berlin), “Nostalgia for the Immediacy: The Role of the Witness and Mediated Experience in Contemporary Autofiction”
Julio Prieto (Universidad Complutense, Madrid), “Archive Fever: Hybrid Testimony and Documentary Fiction in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Insensatez”
James Harker (Bard College Berlin), “Autofiction, Social Media, and Collective Testimony”
Christopher Fort (American University of Central Asia), “Notes on Abdulla Qahhor’s Testimony”
5 pm-6:30 pm Artist/Scholar Address
Alicia Partnoy (Loyola Marymount University), “When Survivors Write: Literature and Discourse of Solidarity”
Évènement en Anglais
- Evan BONNEY
« Policing Grass: Forestry, Surveillance, and Settlement within the Intermountain West of the United States, 1897-1914 »
- Piergiorgio BRUNO
« Le parti-annonceur. Des experts militants aux agences de publicité : une étude comparative des stratégies et organisations communicationnelles adoptées par les conservateurs britanniques et les socialistes français et italiens (1970-1990) »
- Stefano CHESSA ALTIERI
« A Middle Way for the Middle Kingdom. The Granting of MFN Commercial Status to China and Beyond (1989-1992) »
- Shirley LE PENNE
« Punir et guillotiner pendant la guerre d’Algérie »
- Chloë MAYOUX
« Negotiating Nuclear Power and Independence in Africa »
- Emma PAPADACCI STEPHANOPOLI
« Introduction à la thèse »
Évènement en Français
Day 1 - Thursday 6 June
14:00-14:30 Welcome coffee
14:30-14:45 Introduction
Panel 1. Imperial Currencies and Imperial Space
Chair Panel: Anne Conchon (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
14:45-16:45
- Arielle Alterwaite, (University of Pennsylvania), “Political Economies of the Haitian Gourde, Counterfeit and Otherwise”.
- Gabriel Lietner (Université de Genève) and Gianandrea Nodari (Université de Genève), “London '33: Currency blocs and Imperial Monetary Policy”.
- Brecht Nijman (Huygens Institute, KNAW), “Counting out the Money: Cataloging currencies in the Dutch East India Company archive then and now”.
16:45-17:15 Coffee Break
Panel 2. Monetary Agency in Empires
Chair Panel: Patrice Baubeau (Université Paris-Nanterre)
17:15-18:45
- Alessandro De Cola (Università di Bologna), “African Agencies in the Making of Colonial Currencies: The Case of Hassan Mussa El Akkad in the Italian Colony of Eritrea (1885-1890)”.
- Robin Frisch, (University of Bayreuth), “The Quest for Monetary Control in Interwar Togo: Unveiling Colonial Economic Ambiguities”.
Day 2 - Friday 7 June
8:30-9:00 : Welcome Coffee
Panel 3: Materiality of Money: Minting and Resources in Empires
Chair Panel : Jérôme Jambu (Université Le Havre-Normandie)
9:00-10:30
- Gustave Lester (Harvard University), “From Gold Standard to Gold Rush: Precious Metal Science and Money Politics Across Anglo-American Empires, 1750-1830”.
- Geoffrey Durham (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “A New Ruble for the Russian Empire: Mining and Minting Platinum in the 19th Century”.
10h30-11h Coffee break
Panel 4: Imperial and Colonial currencies in Economic Development
Chair Panel : David Todd (CHSP)
11:00-12:30
- Matteo Rossi, (Fondazione Luigi Einaudi Torino), “Monetary Independence Henry Carey, the Greenbacks and the United States in the World Market”.
- Dorcas Djonkui (Université de Douala), “La création du Franc CFA et ses répercussions en Afrique Centrale : le cas du déficit de la balance commerciale sur les produits alimentaires”.
12:30-14:00 Lunch at Sciences Po
Panel 5: The Introduction of Imperial Currencies : Conquest, Law and Institutions.
Chair Panel: Nicolas Delalande (CHSP)
14:00-16:00
- Ludovic Desmedt (Université de Bourgogne), “To issue paper money in the New World: the contrasting cases of New France and New England (17th-18th centuries)”.
- Toyomu Masaki (Kanazawa University), “The French Invasion of the Haut Sénégal and payment issues: 1880-1900”.
- Mohammadreza Eghbalizarch (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, IHEID) and Soheil Ghasemi (IHEID), “The Sterling Capitulation: The Imperial Bank of Persia and the British Juridico-Monetary Intervention in Semi-Colonial Iran (1890-1919)”.
16:00-16:15 Conclusion
16:30-18:00 : Visit of the Musée de la Monnaie (15mins by foot from Sciences Po)
Évènement en Anglais