Centre for Studies in Literature
Conference 2014: Cultures of Commemoration
An international conference hosted by the Centre for Studies in Literature, University of Portsmouth
11-12 July 2014
Taking as a starting point the range of events which will mark the centenary of WWI in 2014, this conference considered the commemoration of a variety of events, and the place occupied by commemorative practices in contemporary literature and culture. We examined how different ‘pasts’ and key historical moments – including, but not exclusively, the First World War – are memorialised, fictionalised, and at times commercialised, in the present.
Keynote Speakers
- Dr Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester, UK)
- Dr Rosario Arias (University of Málaga, Spain)
- Plus a storytelling event with acclaimed storyteller and author Dr Simon Heywood (University of Derby, UK)
Topics included:
- Remembering/consuming the past in contemporary literature and culture
- The presentation of past military conflicts in contemporary literature and culture
- Memory, memorialisation, and the function of loss in contemporary literature and culture
- Neo-historical returns to the past in contemporary literature and culture
- ‘Dark tourism’ and the fascination with past traumas in contemporary literature and culture
- Exhausting the past: commemoration fatigue and forgetting in contemporary literature and culture
Further information
For further information, please contact Dr Christine Berberich (Christine.Berberich@port.ac.uk) or Dr Elodie Rousselot (Elodie.Rousselot@port.ac.uk).