Second NEWW November meeting

28 November 2008, the international network programme NEWW "New approaches to European Women’s Writing" organises a workshop in collaboration with the Dutch doctoral school Huizinga Instituut (Amsterdam). This is the second of a long term series that allows the network researchers to discuss various themes of their research project. Graduate students are invited to participate and to propose papers.

The theme of this worksho, coordinated by Anke Gilleir, will be: Literary Historiography and the "Other". Discussion will be about historiography and the question of "cultural heritage": how did our present day knowledge of historical literature get established and how did it present and represent "others" (women as well as other "others").

Obviously as children of the 21st century we know that history is a construction. Philosophy of history has investigated into history as a textual practice (H. White, F. Ankersmit), we have learned how collective memories are formed and institutionalized (A. Assmann), we realize that both on collective and individual level memory functions in a spatio-temporal context, we have come to estimate the impact of trauma, we know that traditions are invented (E. Hobsbawm), that concepts such as "origin" and "generation" are not mere facts of nature but highly functional terms in the process of community formation, terms that may blur diversity and incompatibility of historical experience (S. Weigel). At the end of the addition we are extremely conscious, yet how does it influence our practice as scholars in literary history?

Our workshop addresses questions on the kinds of literature we deal with, on how much – in spite of every possible form of reflexion - we take for granted the canonical inheritance in spite of all sorts of ideological awareness. PhD-students who address this matter either as their main research question or as a side-glance are invited to present their reflexions in our workshop (send an e-mail to Suzan.vanDijk@let.uu.nl), in which senior researchers will also participate.

Meeting place:

Utrecht, Faculty of Humanities:
Drift 23 (near the Janskerkhof), room 0.12, 10.00 – 17.00.

Speakers include:

• Prof. Anke Gilleir, presentation
  
• Prof. Hilde Hoogenboom
  
• [Monica Soeting]
  
• [Zsuzsanna Varga]
  
  

and Ph.D.-students:

• Anne van Buul
  
• Mirjam Truwant, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
  
• Hanneke Boode, Groningen
  
  

Some bibliographical references:

in particular:

• Linda Hutcheon, "Interventionist literary histories: nostalgic, pragmatic, or utopian", in: Modern Language Quarterly, 1998, 59/4.
  

• Franco Moretti, "The slaughterhouse of literature", in Modern Language Quartely, 2000, 61/1.
  

• Aleida Assmann, Vergessene Texte. Konstanz: UVK Univers. Verlag.
  

and for further reading:

• Walter Benjamin, "Ausgraben und Erinnern", in : Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Timan Rexroth. Frankfurt : Suhrkamp, 1972, IV/1.
  

• Susan A. Crane, "Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory", in: American Historical Review, 1997, 102/5.
  

• Amanda Gaily, "How Anthologists Made Dickinson a Tolerable American Woman Writer", in: The Emily Dickinson Journal, 2005, XIV/1.
  

• Jutta Schlich, Literarische Authentizität. Prinzip und Geschichte. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2002.
  
  

SvD, November 2008

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