SELMA

In 2019 SELMA is welcoming two new postdoctoral scholars: today we introduce AVRIL TYNAN, conducting her research in comparative literature at TIAS where she is working on her project ‘Father or Failure: Fathers in Francophone Literature and Film since 1945’. Her background is in French literature and Holocaust studies, and she has published on the ethics and aesthetics of Holocaust narrative. She has previously taught French language and culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. Here is a little glimpse in her work:

THE TATOO HERMENEUTIC: RETHINKING READING

In 2010 I was living in Brighton in the UK, working nights in retail, and academia was the last thing on my mind. But when the guy I had been dating for a few months got a new tattoo, I started thinking about how we tell stories, how we create and understand the stories that surround us, and how our bodies, our selves, are enmeshed in the narratives of others. This tattoo – a reminder of some of the good times we’d had together – was now a part of the wider story told by his other tattoos, each one linked to a time, a place, a person, a memory.

A year later we broke up, and I thought again about that tattoo: what story did it tell now? How was its link to time and place, to Brighton, to 2010, to the world we had lived in at the time changed by these events? Our break up had been amicable, but what if it hadn’t been? How would that affect the way he now told its story to others, to the next girl he dated? Of course, this made me realize that all of his stories had, in the first place, been subjective, influenced by his emotions at the time or later, and that each story would rarely be told in an identical way to an identical listener. Indeed, my own interpretation of each of his tattoos was not only influenced by the story he told me, but by my own history, my own experiences and memories, and that each interpretation can be altered, influenced, reinterpreted over time.

But was the influence of interpretation only present at the point where the story was read or told? Was it not the case that the tattoo was already subject to the interpretation of its bearer? A personal choice to remember a certain event, person or experience in a certain way? Was the tattoo itself really anything more than a vehicle for interpretation, an empty aesthetic that can only truly take shape through interpretation and reinterpretation? What did that tattoo really tell you about that guy? About that time? About that place? About me?

When I later rejoined academia, this way of thinking about tattoos became apparent in the reading of narratives, too, and particularly in the field of hermeneutics. Everything we read – be it text or tattoo – is subject to interpretation, but everything we interpret has already been subject to the interpretations of the author, the narrator, the storyteller.

And there was another level to this reading of the tattoo. When this guy chose to get each of his tattoos, he knew that each one was going to be on his body forever. That it would be seen by others, that it would provoke questions and conversations. That it could mislead, deceive, lie, just as much as it could represent; it could be truthful, without telling the whole truth. However private we believe tattoos to be, often, they are quite the reverse. A tattoo is a deliberate (re)presentation, showing what you want to be seen at the time, and while we may sometimes be aware of this when we think about tattoos, we rarely bear it in mind when we think about narratives. But what if authors too were manipulating words just as the tattoo may manipulate our interpretations? Just as a tattoo today is personal choice, so too are the words written by an author, carefully selected and manipulated, choreographed into narrative sequence.

When we read, we read the words on the page – this is how we are taught to read – and we read the words all the while expecting them to tell us something. But the author knows this too. But what if the story the author writes were only a distraction, a way of focusing the eye elsewhere, otherwise than the story he or she wants – or doesn’t want – to tell? Reading is not only about reading what we are given, but about reading beyond what is evident as text, reading the gaps and absences in every narrative.

That tattoo, back in Brighton in 2010, tells a story, and it will always tell a story, though not always the same story, and never the whole story, and only ever one part of a bigger story that is still being written. There is so much missing that isn’t being shown, that is, more importantly, being hidden behind the very image that purports to tell us so much. In presenting that one image, we are distracted, as readers of other people, from asking what is not there: why not a different image? Why not a different time? We never ask questions like that. But our processes of reading need to think about what is absent as much as what is present: not just ‘what do we know about this?’ but why this and not that?

Photo: Maria Vasenkari

The International Conference “Uses and Abuses of Storytelling: Theorizing the Intersections of Narrative, Memory and Identity”, organized by the University of Turku, 14-16 February 2019, brought together scientists of the storytelling and cultural memory to reflect on the different ways in which stories are used in modern society. Particular attention was paid to the use of stories in building the individual and collective identities. Read more…

Dear Selma followers!

We look forward to Christmas holidays after the very busy 2018 SELMA year! Before we come back in 2019 with a fresh programme, please find below a ‘goody bag’ with calls and invitations for conferences, workshops and symposiums (organized by or in collaboration with SELMA)!

Wishing you a very happy festive season and all the best in a forthcoming year!

Hyvää joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta!

14-16 February 2019, University of Turku, Finland

USES AND ABUSES OF STORYTELLING: THEORIZING THE INTERSECTIONS OF NARRATIVE, MEMORY AND IDENTITY

Read more about speakers & programme here.

Miten elämästä tehdään fiktiota? Saako elämästä ylipäätään tehdä fiktiota ja kenen ehdoilla se tapahtuu? Mikä on eettinen vastuumme menneisyyden ihmisistä tehdessämme heistä taidetta? Minkälaiseksi elämän ja fiktion välinen suhde muotoutuu autofiktiossa, entä romaanissa tai vaikkapa kirjeenvaihdossa?

Tässä iltapäiväsymposiumissa pohdimme elämän ja fiktion suhdetta niin eri kirjoittamisen muodoissa kuin taiteen tekemisen prosesseissa. Puhujina on niin tutkijoita kuin eri taiteenalan tekijöitä.

Päivä päättyy Ooppera Skaalan Monologi-koneoopperaan, tulkintaan runoilijan elämästä: Edith Södergran – Vierge Moderne, Aurinkobaletin tiloissa klo 19 (lipun hinta 30/20 e). Varaa lippusi ilmoittautumisen yhteydessä.

Tilaisuus on avoin kaikille kiinnostuneille! Voit ilmoittautua tapahtumaan ja varata itsellesi lipun illan esitykseen 9.11. mennessä täältä  Oopperaliput maksetaan paikan päällä teatterissa viimeistään puoli tuntia ennen esitystä. Esitys kestää noin tunnin.

OHJELMA

13.15 Avaus, elämäkertatutkija, kulttuurihistorian dosentti Maarit Leskelä-Kärki

13.30 Näytelmän henkilö: historia, aika, esitys, dramaturgi Seppo Parkkinen

14.30 Pitsihattu likalätäkössä, taiteilija-tutkija, kuvataiteen tohtori Elina Saloranta

15.15 Kahvitauko

15.45 Autofiktio, Knausgård ja meidän Knasu, kirjallisuusterapeutti, kirjallisuustieteen dosentti Päivi Kosonen

16.30 Eläytyminen kirjailijan metodina. Ellen Thesleffin fiktiivinen päiväkirja, kirjailija Pirkko Soininen

Fiktio elämäkertatutkijan välineenä, tutkija-tietokirjailija Hanna-Reetta Schreck

17.15 Volter ja Hilja – kirjeistä kirjaksi ja draamaksi, viulisti, elämäkertatutkija Laura Kokko

Lopetus klo 17.45

Klo 19 Edith Södergran – Vierge Moderne / Ooppera Skaala

This kick-off event will introduce and discuss SELMA’s new Academy of Finland project IDENTITY WORK: NARRATIVE AGENCY, METANARRATIVITY AND BIBLIOTHERAPY, which is part of the Consortium INSTRUMENTAL NARRATIVES.  The sub-project of the team in Turku focuses on the uses and abuses of narrative in the construction of lives and identities. Over the past few decades, the notion of “finding one’s own narrative” has pervaded the culture at large. In response, contemporary narrative fiction has increasingly come to reflect on the problematic uses of narrative in identity work. Our team brings into dialogue contemporary story-critical fiction and the broader uses of narrative in contemporary consumer culture in which narrative identity is often understood in narrow, limiting, and commercially motivated ways. It examines the relationship between narrative and identity from two interlaced perspectives: in relation to 1) metanarrativity and 2) the uses of narrative in promoting wellbeing.

The project will be introduced by the PI of the Turku team, Hanna Meretoja, and the sub-projects of the teams in Tampere and Helsinki will be briefly introduced by their PIs, Maria Mäkelä and Merja Polvinen. After the introductions, the aims and key issues of the Turku team will be discussed in a roundtable by the project members Marta Cenedese, Colin Davis, Johanna Kaakinen, Eevastiina Kinnunen, Päivi Kosonen,
Anu Laukkanen, Maarit Leskelä-Kärki, Nena Mocnik and Jouni Teittinen.

Read more about the project on our webpage​.

27 September 2018, Janus (Minerva), Kaivokatu 12, Turku, 18.00 EET

We have the pleasure to invite the representatives of civic society, academics, NGOs, media, institutions, educators, independent cultural workers, and interested members of public to participate at the press conference for the launch of the European Commission – Europe for Citizens – European Remembrance Strand project

 Never again: Teaching Transmission of Trauma and Remembrance through Experiential Learning.

Over the next 18 months, the project aims to address the concealed hatreds, prejudices and normalized oppressions that are learnt through the unhealed and transmitted traumas perpetuated in our everyday lives through seemingly harmless everyday practices. SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory at the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies (University of Turku) together with the project partners from Denmark, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Italy will develop and deliver 4 clusters of local events within their communities to test experiential learning tools (ELT) in order to experience the harmful effects of transmitted collective traumas and how they impact the continuation of hatreds and vengeance today. The project’s events will bring together around 450 students and teachers and additional 500 community members as invited audiences and will influence numerous other individuals by using event hashtags on the social media and online platform. The processes and outcomes will be presented at “Never again: Teaching Transmission of Trauma and Remembrance through Experiential Learning”, a workshop-based conference in June 2019, hosted by University of Turku, where we aim to attract between 50-100 professionals and young people from across Europe, from a variety of disciplines and fields of work, such as universities, NGOs, and public bodies like museums and memorial houses. In the dissemination phase, we will develop and launch a transnational blended education platform, offering different in-class experiential didactic methods and online webinars and didactic videogames. 

PROGRAMME

18.00-18.10 
Welcome speech by the head of School of History, Culture and Arts Studies prof. Marjo Kaartinen and the project leader prof. Hanna Meretoja

18.10-18.30
Presentation of the project by the project coordinator dr. Nena Močnik

18.30-19.00
A word from our international partners and presentation of planned activities

19.00-19.15
Collaboration opportunities

19.15-19.30
Q&A

19.30 
Reception

Please confirm your attendance here by 23.09. 2018. You can follow the livestream of the event here.

MORE INFORMATION & CONTACT

Project leader: prof. Hanna Meretoja, hailme@utu.fi

Project coordinator: dr. Nena Močnik, p. 040 814 65 00, nena.mocnik@utu.fi