Face-to-face event 
29/05 : INALCO, Maison de la Recherche, Auditorium Dumézil, 2 rue de Lille, 75007 Paris
30/05 : Sciences Po, Salons Scientifiques, 1 place Saint Thomas, 75007 Paris

The conference revisits historical processes of knowledge production, immigration, and cultural exchange in colonial and post-colonial geographies of the Gulf. It also uncovers histories of community, migration, language/dialect, and hinterland denials in both the making of Gulf cities and the production of their histories. The aim is to foster novel investigations that question the positionality of different actors, that humanise the landscape, and that deconstruct persistent myths, material and immaterial structures, spaces and systems that limit a critical reading on the Gulf.

Le colloque “Réformer le capitalisme de l’intérieur? Acteur·ices, pratiques, mondes sociaux“, à l’initiative de l’équipe ANR PROVIRCAP, aura lieu les 30 et 31 mai 2024 sur le campus Jourdan de l’ENS, 48 bd Jourdan, Paris. Amphithéâtre Jourdan et salle R1-09

Entrée libre et gratuite dans la limite des places disponibles

Comité d’organisation: Pauline Barraud de Lagerie, Laure Bereni, Élodie Béthoux, Anne Bory, Thomas Depecker, Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, Alice Lavabre

Comité scientifique: Pauline Barraud de Lagerie, Laure Bereni, Élodie Béthoux, Anne Bory, Frédérique Déjean, Thomas Depecker, Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, Alice Lavabre, Antoine Machut, Xavier Monnier, Élise Penalva-Icher, Scarlett Salman, Chloé Socha

Contact et inscription: reformerlecapitalisme@gmail.com

Voir le programme 

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”