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Call for papers

Memories of 1968: International Perspectives

An international conference to be held at the University of Leeds

17^th - 18^th April 2008

Keynote Speakers:

· Kristin Ross (New York)

· Daniel Bensaid (Paris)

· Luisa Passerini (Florence & Turin)

· Wolfgang Kraushaar (Hamburg)

· Marco Antônio Guerra (São Paulo)

The events of 1968 continue to generate widespread interest and controversy among scholars, nearly forty years after student and worker movements erupted across an international stage. In the West, 1968 was associated with the coming of age of the baby boomers, the growth of the New Left, protest against authoritarian attitudes and practices in society, as well as opposition to the Vietnam War. In the Soviet block, on the other hand, it was associated with the Prague Spring, and in China with the Cultural Revolution of Mao’s Red Guard.

Perhaps more than any other moment in post-war history, 1968 has been consecrated within different national cultures and elevated to the realm of the mythical. Moreover, the events of 1968 are nowadays inseparable from their subsequent representation through the media of literature, cinema and theory. While the 1968 events themselves have been the subject of extensive international comparison, and important work has been done on representations of 1968 in literature, film and theory in a number of countries, few if any scholars have compared the subsequent representations of 1968 within these different national settings.

The purpose of this conference is therefore to compare and discuss representations of 1968 within different national contexts. How has 1968 been (re-)produced and/or contested within different national cultures and how do these processes reflect national preoccupations with order, political violence, freedom, youth, authority, self-expression? How has the memory of 1968 been constructed in different media (film, literature, biography, monuments, etc.) and theoretical frameworks (philosophy, sociology, historiography)? Is there a collective social memory of 1968 and does this memory cross different national cultures?

Proposals are invited for papers which deal with these themes in any national context, though an international and comparative approach is strongly encouraged. Titles and abstracts (250-300 words) for proposed papers, which should be in English, should be sent with a short biography and a list of publications to either Dr. Ingo Cornils, German Department [log in to unmask]; Dr. Sarah Waters, French Department [log in to unmask] or Alan O’Leary, Italian Department A.O’[log in to unmask] by Friday 19th January 2007.

Speakers may wish to address one or a combination of the following themes, but papers in other subject areas are also welcome:

National/international representations of 1968

· film

· literature

· theatre

· cultural symbols and icons

· public discourse

· intellectual debates

· narrative accounts

1968: memory and forgetting

· reconstruction

· deconstruction

· myth-making

· revisionism

· recuperation

1968 and theory

· philosophy (post-modernism, individualism, the decline of ‘grand narratives’)

· sociology (post-industrialism, post-materialism, neo-capitalism)

· historiography

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Alan O'Leary [log in to unmask]

Dept. of Italian, University of Leeds

LS2 9JT, UK Tel: +44-(0)113-3433633

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There are many ways of loving, even including the way of the inquisitor. (André Bazin)