REGISTRATION OPEN!
Echoes of Fascism in Contemporary Culture, Politics and Society
SUSSEX CENTRE FOR CULTURAL STUDIES Annual Conference
FRIDAY MAY 26TH 2017, University of Sussex (School of Media, Film and Music)
Keynote speakers:
Dr Gholam Khiabany (academic and political journalist, author of Blogistan)
Angela Nagle (author of Ireland Under Austerity and Kill All Normies)
Professor Arlene Stein (author of Reluctant Witnesses, The Stranger Next Door, Sex and Sensibility)
Dr Sarah Tobias (feminist theorist and activist, author of Trans Studies)
To book: http://onlineshop.sussex.ac.uk/product-catalogue/conference-seminars/school-of-media-film-and-music/echoes-of-fascism-in-contemporary-culture-politics-and-society
SCHEDULE
8.45 Registration opens & coffee available - Silverstone Building [SB] Social Space, 3rd floor
9.30 Welcome: Matilda Mroz (Conference Director) & Sally Munt (Director: Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies) SB 121, 1st floor
9.35 Keynote Presentation
Angela Nagle, ‘Gaming the human system - from dating to demographics’
10.25 Coffee Break
10.45 Parallel Sessions
Fascisms in Culture
Hannah Lammin, ‘Becoming-Rhinoceros: Affective Politics, Heterogeneity and the Digital Sphere’
Benjamin Bland, ‘Music for Europe: Ethnic Eurocentrism and the Presence of Neo-Fascists Ideas in Underground Music Subcultures’
Savannah Sevenzo, ‘If knowing is imperative: understanding testimony in Holocaust poetry'
Global Fascisms
Jason Lee, ‘Neo-Nazism, transnationalism and environmentalism – postcolonial and postmodern paradoxes’
Corinna Schaefer, ‘“Spoiling the Prisoners by Good Food and Idleness”: German Settler Discourse in Colonial Namibia During the Genocide’
Georgios Karakasis, ‘The impact of the internationalization of the war crisis in Syria on the nationalist movement's attitude vis a vis Assad´s regime’
11.50 Short break for panel change
12 Panel on Western Fascisms: Neoliberalism, Populism and the Alt-Right
Malcolm James, ‘Authoritarian Populism / Popular Authoritarianism’
Robert Topinka, ‘Back to a Past that Was Futuristic: The Alt-Right and the Uncanny Form of Racism’
Aristotelis Nikolaidis, ‘Neoliberal Crisis, Media Culture and Contemporary Fascism: Insights from a Greek Case Study’
1.05 Lunch
1.45 Keynote Presentation
Gholam Khiabany, ‘Nativism, Racism, and Class’
2.35 Short break for panel change
2.45 Parallel Sessions
Screening Fascism
Anne Graefer, ‘No Place Like Home: Banal Nationalism and Femininity in German Reality Television’
Wendy Timmons, ‘Only a Little Uncanny: On the Legitimation of Fascism through Weimar Aesthetics in Arnold Franck’s Films’
Milena Popova, ‘Inuman and Inescapable: The Normalisation of Electronic Mass Surveillance in Popular Culture’
Resistance, Protest and Gender
Sophie Joscelyne, ‘Inverted Totalitarianism and Protest Movements in 1960s American Society’
Kath Browne, Catherine Nash and Andrew Gorman-Murray, ‘Resisting Sexual and Gender Rights: New Strategies, Different Challenges’
Charlotte Mears, ‘Women and the Far Right’
3.50 Coffee break
4.10 Keynote Presentation
Arlene Stein and Sarah Tobias, ‘The Holocaust Without Jews, US Without Muslims, and the Men in the White House’
4.50 Short break for panel change
4.55 Panel
Kate O’Riordan, Rachel O’Connell, Samuel Solomon, ‘Between Freedom to Speak and Freedom of Speech’
5.30 Closing discussion
5.45 Conference close
5.45-6.15 Wine reception
7 Dinner
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‘Every age has its own fascism’ – Primo Levi
Within the past year, we have witnessed a number of alarming social and political developments in the UK and globally. The success of the Brexit campaign in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the USA and his recent imposition of a travel ban, have all been dependent on racially charged ideologies, and accompanied by a notable rise in racist, misogynist, and homophobic attacks in the UK and in other Western countries, as the Far Right mobilises and becomes more legitimated.
In broad terms, this conference poses questions around our ethical responsibilities (as academics, community organisations, and human beings) vis-à-vis these developments:
• as the neoliberal consensus frays, how do we respond to resurgent nationalism?
• how can, or should, we respond to the backlash against pluralism, the rise of the alt-right, and the waves of ‘populist’ movements that are sweeping across the West?
More specifically, the conference will provide an opportunity to consider the historical backdrop of contemporary conservative movements. Parallels have frequently been drawn in the media between, for example, 1930s German fascism and the contemporary political and social landscape. We thus seek to question:
• to what extent are we currently seeing ‘echoes’ of past fascist movements?
If every age has its own fascism, as Levi has argued:
• can we learn from the history of fascist movements in a way that will help us to understand our contemporary situation?
Finally,
• how can we put these lessons into practice as we mobilise against racism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia?
The conference is particularly interested in: past fascist movements and their bearing on the present; the rise of the alt-right and new right-wing populism; the right-wing critique of neoliberal globalisation; the current state of, and threats to, human rights, reproductive rights, rights of freedom of movement, LGBTQ rights, and social democracies; feminist activism (past and present); and racialised public discourse. We will also consider these issues through the prism of film, visual culture, literature, memory studies, and creative practice.
The conference will take place at the Silverstone Building, University of Sussex (Falmer campus, UK), and bring together people working in academia, community/activist organisations, think tanks and the media.
The conference fee is £120 for the standard rate, £40 for the unwaged, and £25 for students.
If you represent a community or activist organisation we may be able to support your attendance via a special fund. Please contact us!
Email enquiries to: [log in to unmask]
Conference team: Matilda Mroz (director), Malcolm James, Sally R Munt, Robert Topinka and Victoria Walden of the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies.
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