SELMA

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

13 September 2018, 10-12, Janus (University of Turku, Minerva, Kaivokatu 12)

by COLIN DAVIS, ROYAL HOLLOWAY,  UNIVERSITY OF LONDON &  UNIVERSITY OF TURKU

Behind the question ‘But is it art?’ lie other questions: what values, prejudices and cultural norms do we bring to play when we distinguish between art and non-art, or high art and low art, good art and bad art? What does it matter, what is at stake when we throw doubt on a work’s artistic status or worth? Heidegger’s essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ epitomises a deeply-rooted Western respect for major art works whilst also formulating an exceptionally strong version of that respect. For him, great art speaks, if we know how to listen to it; and what it reveals when it speaks is truth. He demonstrates this through his interpretation of a painting by Van Gogh. Art, and pre-eminently poetry, turn out to be comparable in standing to the highest achievements of thought. But what of the art forms which Heidegger does not appear to revere, especially narrative forms such as film? In a Heideggerian perspective, can a film aspire to rank alongside the greatest works of art and poetry? As a technological innovation, it does not seem to share the qualities which Heidegger finds in great art. A sequence from an early film directed by Jean Renoir allows a discussion of these issues, and it offers its own response to Heidegger’s implicit critique.

Colin Davis is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Turku. His research focuses mainly on connections between literature, film and philosophy, with particular interests in the modern French novel, ethics, ethical criticism, philosophical approaches to literature and film, hermeneutics, literary theory, cultural memory, trauma studies and Holocaust literature.  His books include Critical Excess: Overreading in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Žižek and Cavell (Stanford University Press, 2010),  Postwar Renoir: Film and the Memory of Violence (Routledge, 2012), Traces of War: Interpreting Ethics and Trauma in Twentieth-Century French Writing (Liverpool University Press, 2018) and Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts and Power of Narrative (co-edited with Hanna Meretoja, Routledge, 2018).

Event will be livestreamed. Please join here.