Conference Program

The Conference Program is available below by clicking the corresponding tabs for each panel.

The Conference Agenda is available on the right sidebar of the page.

Art and Identity Making: Self-Representation, Self–Projection and Life Practices

Chair: Emanuel Crudu (Euroacademia, Paris and Brussels)

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  Vangelis Athanassopoulos, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and CNRS, France
  Fake Identities: Nature, Representation, and Self-Projection Based on that hypothesis, and drawing from Aesthetics, Art History and Theory of Representation, this article wishes to attempt an archaeology of the work of art as an apparatus of identification, focusing on the specular links that articulate vision, knowledge, nature and identity in Western culture.

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  Pauline Rose, The Arts University Bournemouth, UK
  The Illustrated Interview as Self-Portrait: Portraying British Women Sculptors This paper considers the role of the illustrated interview as a representation of British women sculptors in the first half of the twentieth century. It addresses both language and photographic imagery as mechanisms through which these artists were positioned as women undertaking a supposedly “masculine” practice.

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  Talitha M. G. Schepers, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, UK
  Identity and Self-Fashioning of an Ottoman Ruler as Shown in Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II (1480) Although accepting Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II as an important cross-cultural artistic testimony, due to the complexity of the painting’s condition and conservation history, few scholars have further explored its significance as a political and cultural expression of self-representation by an Ottoman ruler. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the intercultural dialogue between the identities of the painter and the sitter. In addition, I will discuss not only how portraiture is used to create a cross-cultural identity, but also how courtly culture and the Renaissance itself had an impact on the staging of this multi-layered identity.

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  Christine Vial Kayser, Histoire Culturelle et Sociale de l'Art, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
  Shilpa Gupta: Identity as Shared Day-to-Day Life Practice Gupta is making a statement regarding Indian and Pakistani's identity, referring to a common identity, prior to the Independence, based on the territory, and human presence on the land, trying to overcome a narrow definition of identity based on religion, which is the prevalent definition at present in Pakistan and is becoming more prevalent in India under the spell of the Hindu party. These trends that attempts to assert religion as an essential component of people identities is a passport for confrontation between the communities. Instead she is proposing that collective identities are based on practices of living, of growing food, and of dying, and related to ties with one's neighbors as carers of pasture, of land, of graves.

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Cultural Belonging, Collective Identities and Politics of Representation through Difference

Chair: Pauline Rose (The Arts University Bournemouth, UK)

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  Andrew Cobbing, University of Nottingham, UK
  Henry Stanley’s ‘The East and The West’ (1865): Reflections on Civilization and Identity by Britain’s First Muslim Peer This paper explores the reflections on ‘civilization’ and identity that developed in Westminster debates and through the press in the 1860s, with particular focus on an 1865 pamphlet entitled 'The East and the West: Our Dealings with Neighbours'. In some respects, they address themes strikingly reminiscent of challenges that continue to face multicultural societies today.

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  Déborah Lévy, University of Vincennes-Saint-Denis Paris 8, France/ University of Tokyo, Japan
  ‘Superflat’ and the Reconsideration of the Western Heritage: For a New Definition of the Japanese Identity This study will show how Morimura Yasumasa uses the imagination from the Japanese aesthetic and exoticism to exhibit a certain Nippon imaginary. Quoting and sliding inside the narration of the famous masterpieces, Morimura’s substitutions and hybridizations reflect another historic alternative. In a search of recognition of Japanese path, cross-cultures and cross-genders are instruments to set up a dialogue addressing the Western influence.

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  Maxime Boyer-Degoul, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
  Teshigahara Hiroshi – Filmmaker of the Japanese Collapsing Identity This presentation will pay special attention to two of Teshigahara’s movies The Face of Another (1966) and The Man without a Map (1968) and bring out special patterns such as social mask and evaporation of man like illustrations of atomic and war legacy as well as crisis of modernity resulting from it.

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  Wim De Winter, Ghent University, Belgium
  Visual Objects in European-Bengali Identity Dynamics: From 18th Century Exchanges to Contemporary Afterlives My contribution investigates the history, appropriations and afterlives of visual objects involved in historical intercultural exchanges in 18th century Bengal. Visual objects appear in this history on multiple levels, both as gift-objects and as part of 'early visual anthropologies'. As gift-objects, specific visual materials such as Flemish prints or copies of European paintings circulated as gifts from European merchants to influential local power-brokers.

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  Saffron Newey, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University), Melbourne, Australia
  Sullied Sublime: Art History and Identity in the Post Internet Era This paper focuses on two migrant, European painters who influenced the perception of a cultural identity in the newly colonised Australia between 1850 and 1890: Swiss-born, Abram-Louis Buvelot (1814-1886) and Austrian, Eugene von Gerard (1811-1901). Both have been posthumously honoured as fathers of the Australian landscape and, conversely, criticised for their misrepresentation of Australian history.

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Identities and the Cities: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction

Chair: Gerhard Eichweber (Value Group, Switzerland)

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  Thelma Lazo-Flores, Chatham University, Interior Architecture and Landscape Architecture Programs Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
  Taxonomy of Engagements in Furnishing the City Most cities identify with the compendium of everyday neighborhood narratives and urban dialogues that can be associated with furnishings in parks, squares and streets. In that same fabric of the built environment are landscape furniture and outdoor artifacts such as lighting and pedestrian objects, significantly shaping the public space into a functional and idyllic community. Each of the major city squares or neighborhood spaces reveal various aesthetic elements and purposeful forms.

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  Katarzyna Kaczmarczyk, University of Warsaw, Poland
  Performing the Transitory Space: Landscape Gardens and the Enactment of Identity It was a shared cultural knowledge of only a part of the society and the bodily enactment of the shared norms was without a doubt a sign of social identity, and was also strengthening and materializing that identity. The objective of my paper is to show how landscape gardens were not only perceived, but bodily performed and how this somatic enactment was a crucial building block of identity. To do so, I am going to analyse two gardens created in the first half of the 18th century (Stowe and Rousham) and the literature about visiting them.

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  Tetiana Havlin, University of Siegen, Germany
  Ordinary Cities and EXTRAordinary Immigrants: Liquid Identities in the Urban Settings The Kaiserslautern’s case study, investigated by means of ethnography and biographical methods, illustrates the embedding processes of various immigrant groups. Among others the most essential for the local identity quest are asylum seekers, ethnic German or Jewish re-settlers from the former Soviet Union, military-related US-citizens, and high-qualified professionals at university or in the IT branch.These different immigrant groups with their liquid identities influence the local society and its structures in their peculiar ways, transforming Kaiserslautern as an ordinary city by EXTRAordinary immigrants.

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  Nadia Bertolino, Sheffield School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, UK
  Collective Anamnesis and Individual Identity: A Critical Reflection on Debord’s Theory to Interpret the Artistic Transformation of Symbolic Urban Spaces The contemporary phenomena of informal uses of urban spaces, temporary architectural interventions - and even occupation- for artistic and creative purposes demonstrate that the affirmation of collective values can only take place through the appropriation of specific urban spaces. Following Debord, in this process, the individual identity is affirmed accordingly. Through a critical overview of selected case studies in Europe, this study demonstrates the evidence of the linkage between the creative actions, as a form of expression of the collective identity, and the spatial features of the places where they may happen.

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Documentary Film: Somewhere Between

A Film by Linda Goldstein Knowlton

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  Linda Goldstein Knowlton, Director of 'Somewhere Between'
  Somewhere Between When China passed its One Child Policy to limit population growth, an unexpected surge of abandoned baby girls started flowing into its orphanages. Since 1991, over 80,000 of those girls have been adopted by American families. While many adoption-focused documentaries give voice to adoptive parents, Somewhere Between explores the emotional and cultural impact of adoption from the point of view of four teenage girls, all adopted from China. This award winning film shares their personal journeys as these adoptees convey the experiences of a generation of young people attempting to reconcile their multiple identities while navigating the already perilous waters of American adolescence. A recent adoptive parent of her own Chinese baby, filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton opens the film expressing her concerns for her daughter. How will she build a strong sense of identity as she grows older? Will she feel like an 'outsider' living in a family with two Caucasian parents? How will she supplement the missing pieces of her early life? Goldstein Knowlton seeks these answers by chronicling the experiences over two years of Haley, Jenna, Ann, and Fang, all struggling to find their place in the world. Each girl approaches her Chinese heritage differently, connecting with her birth culture in varying degrees. And each grapple in different ways with the the discrimination and racism they face, as their identity challenges typical ideas about race and culture for themselves and their communities. Shedding stereotypes and a one-size-fits-all identity, Somewhere Between poignantly conveys the vulnerability, confusion, and courage of these girls as they wonder, 'Who am I?' As Somewhere Between plunges the viewer into their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary experiences, we too, are encouraged to pause and consider who we are - both as individuals and as a nation of immigrants and people from diverse backgrounds.

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History, Memory and Identity: Re-Invention of the Past through Artistic Narratives

Chair: Emanuel Crudu (Euroacademia, Paris & Brussels)

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  Fortunata Calabro, Independent Researcher, London, UK
  Who Can Erase the Traces? Galindo tends to promote dissidence in the public sphere through the mechanism of disillusionment and disenchantment.She is intent on understanding reality as historical and conflictive rather than natural or harmonious. Indeed, through her activist performances, and by using her body, the artist recalls notions of national identity and the formation of a social imaginary.

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  Patrícia Martins Santos Freitas, Unicamp – State University of Campinas, Sao Paolo, Brazil
  Modernity and Identity in São Paulo During the 1950’s: Three Murals from Cândido Portinari This presentation aims to introduce, through the study of three murals from the Brazilian artist Cândido Portinari, hypothesis on how some regional topics - linked to the memory and identity of São Paulo and the Latin America - were related to the modern architecture and the debates observed in Europe.

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  Aneta Strzemżalska, European University at Saint Petersburg, Russia
  Mugham, Meykhana, Jazz: Musical Performances, Traditionalism and National Identity in Contemporary Azerbaijan The study explores why mugham, meykhana, and jazz have come to represent Azerbaijan, how they have been approached and produced, and why memory and tradition, in these particular forms, have taken on particular significance in different historical periods: the beginning of the past century, the Soviet times, and nowadays. Above all it the research points to music "traditions" in Azerbaijan as being an artificial cultural construct, which is periodically reinvented. It also demonstrates how "folk revival" has played a key role in strengthening Azerbaijani national consciousness in the post-Soviet period.

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  Francesco Del Sole, Department of Cultural Heritage and Arts, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
  Seven Wonders of the World: How to Remember Destroyed Artworks This contribution tries to develop an interesting theme: the memory of an imagined artwork. The case in question, the seven wonders of the world, is the most famous because it explains how ancient (and destroyed) artworks have become an archetype that lives from antiquity to contemporary age. The reason of this success is present in the same definition of Wonder: Aristotle’s philosophy introduces this word, identified as a primordial feeling that is at the beginning of knowledge.

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Performing Identities in Writing: Literature and Textual Strategies of Identity Making

Chair: Emanuel Crudu (Euroacademia, Paris & Brussels)

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  André Fischer, Department of German Studies, Stanford University
  Conservative Identity Politics Identity and Transformation in Ernst Jünger’s Postwar Writings The catastrophe of the First World War shattered numerous European national identities and led to various compensatory narratives that aimed to restore a sense of unity and belonging, forging the fiction of nationhood. Within the German context, probably few other figures reflect the cultural impact of this search for identity more diversely than philosopher and writer Ernst Jünger, particularly in regards to narrating nationhood. In his poetic and essayistic output, he probed several roles in order to model new forms of national identity and elitist belonging.

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  Lara Pehar, University of Toronto, Canada
  Kafka on Trial: Cultural Appropriation and the Politicisation of Literature A century after Franz Kafka wrote his famous short story The Judgment, a judgment befell his own literary corpus: The legal dispute over the unpublished writings of the Prague author and his executor Max Brod ended with a 2012 ruling by a Tel Aviv court, awarding their ownership to the National Library of Israel, in support of its claim that Kafka’s writings are a cultural asset which belongs to the Jewish people, and as such, to the Jewish state. The highly politicized use of Kafka’s Jewishness and Israel’s appropriation of his works is problematic. This paper contextualizes Kafka's literature as one that challenges traditional notions of identity formation. A reading of Kafka necessitates reaching beyond the limits of national, ethnic and religious borders. This quality affords him global recognition.

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  Francesca Pierini Major, Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
  Trading Rationality for Tomatoes: The Consolidation of Anglo-American National Identities in Popular Literary Representations of Italian Culture In his influential study The Rhetoric of Empire (1993), David Spurr analyzes journalistic discourse on the Third World and isolates a nucleus of important rhetorical figures around which representations of the colonial and post-colonial other are articulated. In this paper, I borrow these rhetorical figures and I adapt them to the context of contemporary Anglo-American representations of Italian culture in popular literature. This highly romanticized factor is often the reason why Italy is sought after as an ideal place of contemplation, regeneration, tranquility, and authenticity. However, through the depiction of Italy as a pre-modern other, Anglo-American authors manage to consolidate their national identities as thoroughly modern, rational, dynamic, and forward-looking.

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  Lia Durán Mogollón, University of Siegen, Germany
  An Emerging European Literary Field The common market and the EU´s cultural policies and their possible effects on the flows of literary exchange within the European space and the Europeanization in terms of sales and teaching of literature are relevant subjects of research in the process of establishing the concrete extent to which one could start speaking of a European literary field.

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Identity and the Visual: The Role of Visual Representation in Shaping Identitarian Signifiers

Chair: Daniela Lenčéš Chalániová (Anglo-American University, Prague, Czech Republic)

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  Hang-Sun Kim, Visiting Assistant Professor with the German Department at the University of Toronto
  The Role of the Visual Arts in the Construction of Collective Identity: Hofmannsthal, Dürer and Van Gogh In Letters of a Man Who Returned Hofmannsthal shows that our conceptions of individual and collective identity are grounded in and shaped by artistic representations of the place and the culture to which we feel we belong. The aim of my paper is to unpack Hofmannsthal’s critique of an essentialist understanding of identity through a close reading of this text.

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  Tanja Schult, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University
  From Stigma to Medal of Honor? Auschwitz Tattoos as Embodied Memories While Holocaust survivors in the decades after the war met with ignorance about the meaning of their tattooed number or even suspicion about how they had managed to survive,the picture of a young person with a hip tattoo might not immediately evoke associations with the Holocaust. Can the past really be tattooed on the present? The tattoos can be understood as an expression of generational trauma-transfer, or as aide-mémoires,tools to build one owns identity by recalling family or national history.

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  Edina Eszenyi, University of Kent, School of History / Lecturer in Art History, Rome Art Program
  The Psychostasis Angel Weighing as a metaphor of divine judgment has been used by Christian writers as early as the fourth-century, and the Weighing of Souls or Psychostasis turned Archangel Michael into a central figure of Last Judgment compositions. The task of weighing good and bad deeds to determine the soul’s otherworldly fate upon death is not associated with the archangel by textual tradition, however, and there is no consensus about the reasons for the choice of the archangel for this role in art. Neither the Scriptures nor apocryphal writings give convincing reasons for associating the Weighing of Souls with angels. The presentation offers an insight into the dynamics of text and image by juxtaposing art historical theories with angelological texts in search of the mysterious Psychostasis angel.

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  Daniela Lenčéš Chalániová, School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Anglo-American University, Prague
  Visualising Securitisation and De-Securitisation of Migration in the Mediterranean: A Critical Iconologyof Migrant Images in the Media and on the Social Networks In my contribution, I want to trace the recent visual discourse surrounding (im)migration across the mainstream online media and across selected social networks to show, on the one hand, the continued social construction of a migrant as the Other/Threat/Plague, as Francesca Falk brilliantly shows in her book chapter explaining that the European stock photo agencies by depicting the European rescuers in hazmat suits and masks create a social reality in which the “territorial borders are superimposed on the boundaries of the body; migration appears at the same time as an assault upon the integrity of one’s own and Europe’s body” (Falk 2010: 183).

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Society, Politics and Identity Making Practices

Chair: Emanuel Crudu (Euroacademia, Paris & Brussels)

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  Yaron Jean, University of Haifa, Israel
  A Document of No Good: The Modern Passport System and the Administration of the Undesired in Europe between the World Wars Based on primary sources and new findings concerning the political use of travel documents for excluding undesired populations the paper examine the story of modern passports system in Europe between the wars. It will explore its far reaching impacts of state issued documentation on the restriction of the freedom of movement in Europe between wars as well as its implicit influence on setting the stage for migration management after 1945.

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  Setki Mulla, Albanian University Tirana, Albania

  Fejzi Kolaneci, University of New York in Tirana, Albania
  Investigating Okun Misery Index for Democratic States with Application in Albania Okun misery index is a fundamental poverty assessment parameter. The objective of the present study is to develop a statistical analysis for Okun misery index in each democratic state during a specified period. The countries with the lowest misery index are: Switzerland 3.50, Japan 4.80, Norway 4.90, Mexico 8.37 and Australia 8.80. The countries with the highest misery index are: Greece 29.23, South Africa 28.90, Spain 24, etc. This method applied in Republic of Albania over the period January 2005 –December 2014.

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  Gerhard Eichweber, Silva Plan / Value Group, Switzerland
  Identity, Diversity, Set Theory: The Design of Concepts and Solutions for a better Future The paper relates to previous papers about economy, crisis, entrepreneurship versus both socialism and capitalism, employment and the ability of appropriate remuneration, as related to the "culture" of dealing with qualitative diversity and its distinction as well as realisation, and what this means regarding concepts such as education, democracy etc. Having defined as the most important of all equal rights for individuals as well as groups, societies, states and continents, the "equal right of being different", thus, as the right of being, this paper adds another way of explanation as yet another piece to the puzzle of understanding the importance and priority of qualitative diversity and distinction over all, but above all over all merely quantitative aspects and criteria.

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