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”

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 4:  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 5: 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 6:  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)