led by Dr Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic
This workshop looks at the aftermath of a mass atrocity, a temporal moment when the killings are over and questions of justice and remembrance come to the fore. Through comparative studies of historical and contemporary mass atrocities, the workshop will create opportunities to interrogate notions of transitional justice and impunity and to engage with two exceptionally productive theoretical interventions: post-memory (Marianne Hirsch) and counter-monuments (James Young).
There are no requirements to enrol in the course. However, you will be asked to either join an online watch party or watch an ethnographic film Act of Killing (dir. J. Oppenheimer) prior to attending the workshop. The film comes with a sensitivity note.
During the workshop, interactive activities in small groups will be used to consider how juridical processes such as trials do not always lead to reconciliation and harmony and how memory of a mass atrocity persists across generations who have not experienced violence first-hand. The workshop will consider practices of postmemory such as visiting concentration camps and new architecture of postmemory, including monuments, memorials, or visual things such as documentary and fictional films that often make a claim to telling ‘a true story’. The discussion will be facilitated by visual materials, including excerpts from Austerlitz (dir. S. Loznitsa). The workshop will build higher-level analytical skills through an interactive exercise that looks at the role of the medium – stone or celluloid/ plastic and visual representation – in re-positioning us toward a history of a mass atrocity.”