Euroacademia Conferences
Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (9th Edition)April 24 - 25, 2020
Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (9th Edition)June 12 - 13, 2020
8th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions AgainJanuary 24 - 25, 2020
Re-Inventing Eastern Europe (7th Edition)December 13 - 14, 2019
The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (8th Edition)October 25 - 26, 2019
Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (8th Edition)June 28 - 29, 2019
The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (7th Edition)January 25 - 26, 2019- 7th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions AgainNovember 23 - 24, 2018
Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (8th Edition)September 28 - 30, 2018- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (7th Edition)June 14 - 15, 2018
Papers
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
