Upcoming Events

NOVEMBER

Monday, 6 November at 3-4 pm, Cultural Memory and Social Change Webinar

Link to the Zoom meeting: https://utu.zoom.us/j/64471789640

Aesthetics and politics of remembering in contemporary Nordic documentary film
Niina Oisalo, Doctoral Researcher, Art History, Musicology and Media Studies, University of Turku

Chernobyl visual lexicon: exploring the visual framing of toxic heritage from the point of view of participatory culture
Veera Ojala, Doctoral Researcher, Digital Culture, Landscape and Cultural Heritage, University of Turku

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Tiistai 21.11. klo 17.30-20.30, ”Minulle tuli tyhjästä outo ajatus” – tutkimusmatka suruun

Friday, 24 November at 12.00–13.30, Guest Lecture about Comics and Holocaust Testimony

University of Turku, Arcanum, A270

Brett E. Sterling: Holocaust Testimony in Word and Image: The Comics Anthology But I Live (2022)

In the 2022 anthology But I Live, an international team of scholars paired artists from Canada, Germany, and Israel with four child survivors of the Holocaust to create comics based on the survivors’ lived experiences. Rather than merely illustrating these experiences, the artists collaborated directly with survivors to co-create their history in works that navigate memory, witnessing, and commemoration. Through a comparative analysis of each comic, this talk explores how the co-creation of these narratives between artist and survivor constitutes a form of collaborative testimony, while asking how the artists’ formal interventions attempt to create something new and distinct from verbal or textual testimony.

About the lecturer:

Brett E. Sterling is Associate Professor of German at the University of Arkansas. His research and teaching interests include the intersection of literature and political engagement, diversity and multiculturalism in German-speaking Europe, German-language comics, and the works of Austrian exile author Hermann Broch. He has published and presented widely on German-language comics, including the work of Jens Harder, Nicolas Mahler, Barbara Yelin, Ulli Lust, and Birgit Weyhe. With international colleagues, he founded and served as co-organizer of the Comics Studies Network in the German Studies Association. His first book, Hermann Broch and Mass Hysteria: Theory and Representation in the Age of Extremes (Camden House, 2022), was awarded the 2023 Radomír Luža Prize for Best Manuscript in Austrian/Czechoslovak Studies in the World War II era by the American Friends of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance and the German Studies Association. His current book project, Contemporary German-language Comics: A History, is under contract with The Ohio State University Press.

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Thursday, 30 November at 15-16.30, Presentation: Freedom for the Philosopher: Lina Tumanova’s Scholarship and Human Rights Activism in the Late USSR

University of Turku, Arcanum, A229

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to our first seminar of the series Women’s agency during wars and social conflicts: new sources and a fresh look at Eurasian history. 

Our guest is Dr Tatiana Levina, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI), Essen, Germany. Her presentation is: Freedom for the Philosopher: Lina Tumanova’s Scholarship and Human Rights Activism in the Late USSR.

The seminar will be held on 30 November, 2023, in A229, 2th floor, Arcanum.

The program:

15.00-16.00 Presentation
16.00-16.10 Coffee & tea
16.10-16.30 Discussion

The seminar is organized with the financial support of the University of Turku research theme “Cultural memory and social change”. The contact person is Olga Simonova, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (oasimo@utu.fi).

Synopsis of the paper by the speaker:

“Lina Tumanova (1936 – 1985) was a philosopher, human rights activist, translator of Alfred North Whitehead, researcher of Hegel’s logic, Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s philosophy, and colleague of Vladimir S. Bibler at the “Dialogue of Cultures” seminar. A samizdat writer, she contributed to “Bulletin V“, the Fund for the Support of Political Prisoners, and also spoke in defense of those persecuted for political reasons. Detained in the KGB’s Lefortovo pre-trial detention unit in 1984, she was released as being hopelessly ill after a short (two-month) stay in Lefortovo prison.

The book “Freedom and Reason. Selected Philosophical Works” was published by Lina’s colleagues in 2010. Svetlana Neretina, a friend, writes about the two modes of her life: “A quiet philosophising, as if not looking back at the political situation, and a rigid commitment to ethical principles, which forced her to get involved in the political situation”. Unfortunately, Tumanova’s work has hardly been discussed either in the context of philosophy or in the context of dissident practice.

In my talk, I will examine her philosophical path, her research work, and her involvement in the practices of the “Dialogues of Culture” seminar, which focused on the themes of freedom and rationality. In the second part, I will consider Tumanova’s human rights activism, which developed after the Prague Spring of 1968. I will comment on her defense of Ukrainian political prisoners: Dmitry Mazur, Vasily Ovsienko, Stepan Sapelyak, and analyze her open letters in defense of Ivan Kovalev, Anatoly Marchenko, Alexey Smirnov.

At the end of my talk, I will sketch the research on women dissidents and how the practices of their memorisation took place in Russia before 2022 and elsewhere.”

DECEMBER

Monday, 11 December at 14-16, Cultural Memory and Social Change TeamUp

Aistikattila, Medisiina D, Kiinamyllynkatu 10
On-site event only

Strategic research and education profile Cultural Memory and Social Change organizes a TeamUp event to gather together people with common research interests. You will have an excellent opportunity to network over mulled wine and to hear interesting presentations related to this thematic research area.

Everyone interested in the topics of the seminar is welcome to join! The event is in English.

Programme

Opening words
Hanna Meretoja, Professor, Literary Studies and Creative Writing

Trauma fiction and social change 
Liisa Merivuori, Doctoral Researcher, Literary Studies and Creative Writing

Finding spirituality: interpretations from the personal archives of Kalevala women’s association’s founder Elsa Heporauta
Mila Santala, Doctoral Researcher, Study of Cultures

Functional differentiation of society, markets and stakeholders in value cocreation – Social systems theoretical insights for service-dominant logic
Otto Rosendahl, Doctoral Researcher, Marketing

Human diversity as a window into our past, present and future – cascading effects of human encounters into genetic and cultural legacies
Aïda Nitsch, Postdoctoral Researcher, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Jenni Santaharju, Postdoctoral Researcher, Finnish Language and Finno-Ugric Languages

Mulled wine and snacks served at the event. 
 

Registration

>> Registration by Monday, 4 December

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