Lecture: Dr. Nena Mocnik (TIAS, SELMA; University of Turku): “I will not raise my child to kill your child.” Motherhood, collective memory and the continuum of sexual violence in the aftermath of war

Thursday, 7.9. at 2 pm, Minerva, Art History seminar room E221

Dr. Nena Mocnik, SELMA’s first postdoctoral researcher working at TIAS, focuses in her lecture on the questions of collective trauma in war-rape survivors’ families and its impact to reconciliation processes in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina. The initial premise is built on the current marginalized socio-political status of women survivors, now-mothers, and investigates how their testifying, or sharing their violent past through their storytelling might impact the ideas, perceptions, behavioral patterns and understanding of gender-based violence, cultural scripts of sexuality and violence among descendants and how this furthermore affects also unsuccessful reconciliation and peace-building in the region.

This study is the continuation of the lecturer’s previous work about narratives and social imaginary of war-rape survivors and is captured in forthcoming book “Sexuality after War Rape: From Narrative to Embodied Research” (Routledge, 2017).

(available here: https://www.routledge.com/Sexuality-after-War-Rape-Embodied-Research-in-the-Aftermath-of-Desire/Mocnik/p/book/9781138293694.)