2023 Charles F. Fraker Graduate Student Conference

DIS/CONTINUITIES: UNSETTLING MEMORY AND TIME

6-7 October 2023

Department of Romance Languages & Literatures

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Eduardo Cadava (Princeton University)

Deadline for abstracts: June 15th, 2023

LINK TO ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:
http://bit.ly/frakerconference

Free and open to the public

The 2023 Charles F. Fraker Conference, organized by the Romance Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Michigan, takes conversations on memory and time as its point of departure. Through Dis/continuities, we propose a critical reflection on the relationship between memory and time, challenging the imperatives of binary thinking that inform hegemonic and counter-hegemonic
mechanisms of reading. Engaging with panels and dialogues, we open the possibility to inhabit and explore thresholds between linear and disruptive ways of approaching studies of memory and time. This way, we aim to encourage ways of suspending absolute and universal norms of historical comprehension, revision, and research to destabilize traditional modes of reading.

In the wake of political, economic, and natural disasters that constantly take place in the contemporary world with no end in sight, some questions that guide our conference are: What are the political potential and social stakes in re-conceptualizing and negotiating our relationship with the past, the present, and the future? How do narratives engaging with remembrance and time fall outside of the limits of the official archive? What other temporalities can or do emerge from the studies of memory? What does it mean to explore a post-hegemonic way of reading memory and time?