Research

Conferences

Detailed below:

  • BYRON NOW: Second Annual Student Byron Conference (23 May 2012)
  • MAINSTREAMING CO-OPERATION: An Alternative for the 21st Century? (3 July 2012)
  • A SORT OF WISDOM: Exploring the Legacy of Primo Levi (6-7 July 2012)

 

BYRON NOW: Second Annual Student Byron Conference

23 May 2012, at EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY

Edge Hill University in partnership with the Byron Centre at Manchester University is pleased to announce the second annual Student Byron Conference. All conference papers will be delivered by second and third year undergraduates, MA Students and first year PhD students.

The conference will be opened by David McClay, curator of the John Murray archive at the National Library of Scotland. His paper is entitled ‘Byron in the 21st Century: an Archival Perspective’. Prof. Bernard Beatty will close the conference with his paper ‘Byron’s Moment and Byron’s Now’.

This is an excellent opportunity for those students who might be interested in doing postgraduate work, as well as students who have a particular interest in Byron or Romanticism, to try out and develop their ‘Conference Skills’ i.e. writing abstracts, writing and delivering an academic paper. They will also have the opportunity to hear keynote speakers who are international experts in this field.

CALL FOR PAPERS
The theme of the conference is ‘Byron Now’. Students are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 500 words, or any enquiries about the event, to Dr Mary Hurst at hurstm@edgehill.ac.uk Deadline for abstracts: 16 March 2012.

 

MAINSTREAMING CO-OPERATION: An Alternative for the 21st Century?

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 – Thursday 5th July 2012, Manchester and Rochdale

The United Nations has declared 2012 to be the International Year of Co‑operatives. In celebration, this major international forum will discuss how co-operatives in every sphere of social, economic, political and cultural life can emerge globally in the coming century as a participatory, democratic alternative to competitive, private, profit-driven, liberal market democracies.

The Co‑operative College, University of Liverpool, Manchester Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University, Edge Hill University and the University of Central Lancashire are organising this major interdisciplinary conference, with support from the Co-operative Group.

View event information >> 

 


A SORT OF WISDOM: Exploring the Legacy of Primo Levi

Edge Hill University, 6-7 July, 2012

 An international conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of Primo Levi’s death is taking place at Edge Hill University on 6-7 July, 2012. The conference will also host an exhibition of photographs taken of Primo Levi in 1986 by the award-winning photographer Jillian Edelstein.

Primo Levi (1919-1987) was born and lived his entire life in or near Turin, with the exception of the years 1944-45, when he was captured as an anti-fascist partisan, deported to Auschwitz, and then released into war-torn Europe. After liberation, with ‘a torrent of things to tell the civilised world’ and ‘the tattooed number on [his] arm burning like a sore’, he wrote a series of remarkable books, including If This is a Man, The Periodic Table, and The Drowned and the Saved. He is now viewed as not only one of the key literary figures of the twentieth century and one of the most important survivor-writers of the Holocaust, but for many he is an ethical writer of great depth and even a subtle and humane ‘political philosopher’.

Although he famously asked his readers not to treat him as a ‘prophet, oracle, or seer,’ Primo Levi also suspected that there was ‘a sort of wisdom that seeps through from my books which I don’t feel within myself.’ What sort of wisdom do we find in Levi and how can we critically appropriate his legacy without encouraging what Bryan Cheyette has called ‘reductive discourses which have engulfed Levi’s life and work’ and risk turning him into a ‘saint-like figure’?

Confirmed keynote speakers

 Norman Geras

  • ‘Hope, Shame and Resentment: Primo Levi and Jean Améry’
  • Norman Geras is Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester, and author of The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust.

 Robert S.C. Gordon

  • ‘Outrageous Fortune: Primo Levi, Luck and the Holocaust’
  • Robert Gordon is a Reader in Modern Italian Culture and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College University of Cambridge, and author of Primo Levi’s Ordinary Virtues: From Testimony to Ethics.

 Anthony Rudolf

  • ‘Best Regards from Home to Home: Reading Primo Levi through his Letters to a UK Friend and Publisher’
  • Anthony Rudolf is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and author of At an Uncertain Hour: Primo Levi’s War against Oblivion.

 Paul Salmons

  • ‘True Witnesses? Holocaust Education and the Legacy of Primo Levi’
  • Paul Salmons is Head of Curriculum and Development at the Holocaust Education Development Programme, Institute of Education.

 Judith Woolf

  • ‘An Atom of Carbon: Primo Levi and Science’
  • Judith Woolf is Senior Lecturer in English and Italian at the University of York and author of The Memory of the Offence.

 To book a place, please visit Edge Hill’s online store.

 Contact:

E-mail: primolevi@edgehill.ac.uk

Website: www.edgehill.ac.uk/primolevi

 Call for Papers

 We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers or for conference panels on any aspect of Levi’s legacy and from any discipline – including literature, cultural studies, political philosophy, ethics, educational studies, social theory, history and Holocaust studies.

 Topics are not limited to, but may include:

  • Levi and Ethics
  • Levi and Memory / Story-Telling / Witnessing
  • Levi and the Holocaust
  • Levi and the ‘Two Cultures’ of Science and Literature
  • Levi and Work
  • Levi and Friendship
  • Levi as Educator
  • Levi and Writing
  • Levi and Language
  • Levi and Violence and War
  • Levi and Humour
  • Levi and Political Philosophy after the Holocaust
  • Levi and Humanism
  • Representations and Receptions of Primo Levi

 Please email a 500-word abstract (max) of your paper and a short CV by 9 March 2012 to: primolevi@edgehill.ac.uk

The conference will be followed by a call for papers for an edited collection of essays on Levi’s work.

Comments are closed.