Wednesday 1 February 2012, 6 pm – 8 pm,
Room 152, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

True Lies of War
Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar

Hongping Annie Nie, University of Oxford
“China’s War with Japan (1937-1945): A Study of Chinese History Textbooks”

Dr. Hongping Annie Nie (MA in Education, Calvin College, USA; Ph. D. in Cross-cultural Education, Biola University, USA) is currently Faculty Tutor of Chinese Politics at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is also a core member of the Leverhulme funded China’s War with Japan Project, History Faculty, University of Oxford. Her research interests include moral/ideological education, mass communication, patriotism, and national memory. Among her publications are The Dilemma of Moral Education Curriculum in a Chinese Secondary School (University Press of America, 2007) and “On-line Gaming, Ideological Work, and Nationalism in China” (Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming).

Celine Righi, London School of Economics
“Memory in post-Civil War Lebanon under artistic scrutiny: a space for individual and social autonomy in the public debate?”

Celine Righi completed a Master in Political Sciences at Science Po Lyon in 2000 and a Master in Social Psychology at Paris IX Dauphine University in 2001. After working for a think tank in Paris and Lyon in the field of social and economic development, Celine embarked in her PhD in 2008 at the Institute of Social Psychology at London School of Economics.

Entrance free. To reserve a place, please R.S.V.P. Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk

Words and Wars
Group for War and Culture Studies Research Seminar
Monday 21 November 2011, 5.30-7.30pm
Room 152, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Adam Piette (University of Sheffield), “Sputniks, Ice-Picks, KGB: Nabokov’s Pale Fire”

Adam Piette is the author of Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce, Beckett and Imagination at War: British Fiction and Poetry, 1939-1945. His latest book, The Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), is a study of the psychological and cultural impact of the Cold War on the imaginations of citizens in the UK and US. The Literary Cold War examines writers working at the hazy borders between aesthetic project and political allegory, with specific attention being paid to Vladimir Nabokov and Graham Greene as Cold War writers. The book looks at the special relationship as a form of paranoid plotline governing key Anglo-American texts from Storm Jameson to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as well as examining the figure of the non-aligned neutral observer caught up in the sacrificial triangles structuring cold war fantasy.

Alan Morrison ( University of Westminster), “Virginia Woolf: War and Patriarchy”

Alan Morrison is also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and teaches on the Museum Studies Master’s Program at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently working on education and exhibition programmes linked to the centenary commemorations of World War I.

Including Book Launch for Adam Piette, The Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam

Entrance FREE but RSVP Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk or tel. 020 7911 5000 ext. 2307.

Spaces of Reckoning: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Conflict and Memory
Call for participants

Saturday 3 December 2011, University of Westminster, London

UPDATE: new website for the symposium at: http://www.spacesofreckoning.co.uk/ 

Both Conflict Studies and Memory Studies have, in recent years, become of increasing interest across the Humanities and Social Sciences, as they generate compelling dialogues between fields of study and build on the interdisciplinary turn in contemporary academe. This event will create a space that will allow for two things. The first is the development of opportunities for discussion across academic and cultural spheres. This will come about through the analysis and presentation of the representations and conceptualizations of violent conflict and memory addressed by emerging scholars seeking new networks and approaches to research. Secondly, it will include voices from outside academia that can provide new insight and potential empirical challenges to theoretical discussion.

The event will gather together new researchers, and is especially designed to bring together individuals from disciplines that do not traditionally intersect (e.g. Visual Culture and Socio-Legal Studies). The conference will allow mutually beneficial input and new ways of addressing the praxis of Conflict and Cultural Memory through the presentation of and analysis of both objects and concepts. When reflecting on the proposed theme, Post War Reckoning, Memorialisation, Institutions, Artefacts and the Semiotics of Collective Memory, for example, offer a wide territory for investigation, especially when combined with the study of cultural representations of these themes. We are seeking interested participants from across and outside the academic spectrum to contribute to the creation of new and productive dialogues.

Please submit up to 200 Word abstracts for 20 minute papers / presentations by November 10th  2011 to the organisers:
Marija Katalinic, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies: marijakat@gmail.com
Tallyn Gray, Department of Advanced Legal Studies: tallyn.gray@my.westminster.ac.uk

Thomson & Craighead will be showing ‘A Short Film about War’ as an installation for the first time at the MyWar exhibition at the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, running from March 12 – May 30 2010. It will appear alongside works by Phil Collins, Renzo Martens, Milica Tomic, Knowbotic Research, Harun Farocki, Sarah Vanagt, Joseph Delappe, Oliver Laric, Dunne & Raby, Harrell Fletcher and SWAMP.

Animate Projects have also commissioned Lisa LeFeuvre to write a contextual essay about the piece, which is available on their website to read and download as a diffusion book alongside a streaming version of the work. Read Lisa’s essay here.