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.