Narrating Transitional Justice: History, Memory, Poetics and Politics
July 29-30, 2021
Call for Papers (Closed)
Day One-July 29
8:30am-9:30—Breakfast and Registration
9:30am—9:50am—Opening Remarks and Updates by Prof Bonny Ibhawoh, Chief Convener and Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice
9:50am-10:00am—Welcome Remarks by the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities
10:00am-11:30am—Keynote Address by….
12:00pm-1:00pm—Lunch
1:00pm-2:30pm—On Transitional History and Restorative Justice (Panel A)
Bouwknegt, Thijs B—On Transitional History
Federman, Sarah & Niezen, Ronald—Victims and Perpetrators in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity
Kiepe, Jasper A.—Punishment Instead of Progress: The Psyche of Injustice as a Critique of Punitive Transitional Justice
Romeri-Lewis & Natalie Wright—Academic and Policy Project Summary (Larger Project)
1:00pm-2:30pm—National Contexts I (Panel B)
Buhrmann, Anna—Transitioning to Mental Health: Envisioning Justice in Post-Conflict North East Nigeria
Yilmaz, Melike & Momodu, Fatima—Restorative Justice in South African TRC
Weis, Valeria Vegh–Building a transitional narrative in Colombia
Topouzova, Lilia—Truth-Telling & Truth-Staging: Bulgaria’s Special Inquiry Commission for the Investigation of Forced-Labor Camp Atrocities
2:45 pm-4:15 pm—National Context II (Panel A)
Vargas, Laura & Assis, Mariana Prandini—Buen vivir in the aftermath of armed conflict: A critical examination of a community-level reconciliation experience in Colombia
Pavlakis, Christoforos—Creating Safety, Finding Voice and Remembering: Local NGOs Work Towards Dealing with Cambodia’s Legacies Through Non-Judicial and Social Processes of Dialogue and Restoring Cultural Memory
Mustakim Ansary—Religious and Caste Based Persecutions in India: Study of Two Transitional Justice Commission Reports
Knowledge Mwonzora—The nexus between Transitional Justice and memory in Zimbabwe
2:45 pm-4:15 pm (Panel B)
Arts, Cinema and the Memorialization of Transitional History and Healing
Adebayo, Sakiru—“THE Only Truth I Know is What I Feel in my Body”: Memory, Affect & and the Cinematic Prism of Trauma in Zulu Love Letter
MacAulay, Alison–“Hillywood” as History, “Hillywood” as Healing: Transitions in Rwandan Filmmaking, 2004-2014
Ombati, Mokua—Visuals: The Symbolic Face of Collective Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Kenya
Oyekan, Adeolu— Narrating the Genocide in Rwanda Years after: Art, Censorship and the Challenges of Sustainable Cohesion
Nicolás Cuéllar— “HISTORIAS EN KILÓMETROS Laboratory for Audiovisual Training and Content Generation with Social Impact”
July 30th—Day Two
8:30am-9:00am: Breakfast
9:00-10:30 am (Panel A)
Fictions of Reconciliation
Cole, Soji–Nothing But the Truth: The TRC and the Trauma of Shattered Assumption
Noguera, Amira García—Collective memory in Colombia: the take and retake of the palace of justice in the novel 35 deaths
Osita, Nicholas O– Atrocity and Trauma of an African Tragedy and the Quest for Justice: Post Rwandan Genocide Francophone African Testimonios and the Gacaca Justice System
Okur, Jeannette Squires—Art and Justice in Bakhtiyar Ali’s Shari Mosiqare Spiyekan
9:00 am-10:30 am (Panel B)
Gender, Youth, Popular Arts and Projects of Healing and Reconciliation
Salihu, Amina & Omotoso, Sharon Adetutu—Gender, Power and the Politics of Memory: Weaving ‘Just’ into Transtional Justice in Nigeria
Chacha, Babere Kerata & Wahome, Ndiritu John– Life After the Camps: Transitional Justice, Children and Youth Rehabilitation in Kenya
Quiroga-Villamarín, Daniel R– “Coming along through the Radio”: The “Kidnapped Voices” and the Production of Political Memory in Colombia (1994-2018)
Olayoku, Philip Ademola—Representation of Women Through Class and Ethnicity / Race in the Testimonials of the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission of Nigeria
10:45 am-12:15 pm (Panel A)
Cultural Representations, Memory and the Discourse of Transitional Justice
Kirabira, Tonny Raymond—Cultural and Social representations in Transitional justice: The Case of Northern Uganda
Frouini, Ismail– Narrating Transitional (Un)Justice, Atrocity and Memory in Morocco
Harroff, Lindsay– Storytelling after the Public Hearings: Cultural Representations of South Africa Truth Reconciliation Commission
Mandujano, Martha Galvan & DiGeorgio-Lutz, JoAnn—”Memory Words” and Museums: The Efficacy of Never Again in Guatemala
10:45 am-12:15 pm (Panel B)
Trauma, Historical Narratives and Memory
Graham, Shane. Stolen Memories: Trauma, Memory, and Forgetting in Mohale Mashigo’s The Yearning and “The Parlemo”
Sandwell, Rachel– Intimate Truths, Political Truths: Telling stories about sexual violence in post-apartheid South African fiction
Habintwari, D’Artagnan & Scorgie, Lindsay—Genocide Denial and Transitional Justice: The Role of Memorials, Testimony, and Literature
Hammond, Dorothy Lovia—Will they remember? The dearth of Ghana’s tainted past in Ghanaian literature
12:15 pm-1:15 pm – Lunch
1:15 pm-2:45 pm (Panel A)
Narrativizing Historical Violence
Katila, Anna—Imagining and Narrating Transitional Justice: Representation of the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda in Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April (2005)
Ugor, Paul—Creative Imaginaries of Truth and Reconciliation: Nation and Narration in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull
Michelberger, Pascal— After the Facts: The Ambitious Pursuit of Prosecutorial Truth-Seeking in Giulio Ricciarelli’s Labyrinth of Lies
Moreno, Julián Numpaque—The disappeared: memory, narratives, and representation from Colombia
1:15 pm-2:45 pm (Panel B)
Bearing Witness in Transitional Justice Narratives
Onah, Chijioke Kizito—Framing Remembrance: Witnessing, Memory, and Narratives of Boko Haram Terrorism
Knaus, Juliann—The Strength of My Roots: The Political, Cultural, and Historical Significance of Hair in Indigenous Canadian Plays
Onyebuchi, James Ile—Art, Peace Building and Development in Nigeria: Ethnic Identity Construction and Ethnic Conflict in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra
Gustavo Rojas-Páez—Between accountability and oblivion: understanding state crime narratives in transitional Colombia
3:00 pm-4:30 pm (Panel Colombia)
PANEL: ART AND TRUTH IN COLOMBIAN ARMED CONFLICT
The objective of the panel is to discuss the use of art to reconstruct the story of the Colombian internal conflict. The panel will examine questions such as: What is the role of art in telling the truth about the internal conflict? How do art expressions construct a narrative about the heinous crimes committed during the internal conflict? The panel addresses the topic from different disciplines and perspectives. There will be experts in literature, psychology, legal theory, and philosophy.
Dr. Jorge Fabra will be the moderator, and this is a list of participants:
Dr. Alfredo Duplat-Ayala: Alfredo Duplat is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He earned his PhD in Latin American Literature at the University of Iowa, and his BA in Literature at Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. His field of research is modern Latin American literature and culture, with a focus on cultural debates and human rights. He is interested in the theory of narrative transculturation and different theoretical approaches which put greater weight on the social functions of the literary canon. His research projects focus on the intersections between political ideas, cultural debates, and cultural productions.
Dr. Lina María Céspedes is a professor at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia. She earned her Juris Doctor Degree at Temple University and a master’s in law at Cardozo Law School. Her research interests are legal feminism, property rights, and literature. She writes the column of law and literature for El Malpensante, a very popular and influential magazine in Colombia.
Dr. Andrés Molina Ochoa is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at South Texas College where he has been a faculty member since 2016. Andrés completed his Ph. D in Philosophy at the State University of New York, in Binghamton. Andrés specializes in legal theory and transitional justice. He has co-edited a book on the Colombian Peace Process and has written papers in specialized journals.
Dr. Ana Patricia Pabón Mantilla is a Professor at Universidad Industrial de Santander in Bucaramanga, Colombia. She earned her Juris Doctor Degree at Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga. She is the director of the research group in Legal Theory and Legal Education and coordinates the research group in gender and diversity.
Jenny Sánchez. She holds a Psychology degree from the Universidad Pontificia Javeriana. She holds a master’s degree in Clinic Psychology and a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Universidad del Valle, Colombia. Her research focuses on the use of art as a resistance tool in times of crisis.
There is no registration fee or travel costs for invited participants since it is a zoom conference. The conference is entirely virtual.
Participants are encouraged to stay at Hotel McMaster. Click here to book your room.
Dr. Melike Yilmaz (Research Coordinator)
yilmam2@mcmaster.ca
Narrating Transitional Justice: History, Memory, Poetics and Politics
July 29-30, 2021 ● McMaster University, Canada
Location: McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
Date: July 29-30, 2021
Abstract Deadline: April 20, 2020
Contact Information: Dr. Melike Yilmaz (Research Coordinator) – yilmam2@mcmaster.ca
Subjects: Transitional justice; truth commissions; conflict; peacebuilding; human rights; narratives; fiction; history; stories
The Confronting Atrocity Project at McMaster University, Canada announces a 2-day Conference that will bring together expert scholars, policymakers, and civil society stakeholders to examine narratives of transitional justice at the intersections of literary culture, history, memory, poetics and politics.
In the past three decades, there has been a growth in transitional justice measures aimed at redressing historical atrocities and contemporary human rights abuses. Truth and reconciliation commissions have been central to these processes. Truth Commissions have become popular mechanisms for bringing about national dialogue, reconciliation and peaceful co-existence in societies torn apart by egregious violence and collective trauma. Since the 1990s over fifty truth commissions have been established across the world. The key goals of truth commissions as a transitional justice mechanism are accountability, reparation, reconciliation, memorialization, conflict resolution and democratic participation. Truth commissions aspire to create safe, non-partisan and compassionate spaces for both victims and perpetrators to tell stories of conflictual events. For victims of atrocities, the stories they tell function to grant them both a voice and recognition of their trauma, and hence physical and psychological recuperation. For perpetrators, stories have their own social and therapeutic value too as they serve as confessional narratives, allowing them to tell their truths as part of a wider process of national healing and reconciliation.
Scholars and practitioners have noted the centrality of storytelling to transitional justice processes. Stories are crucial to transitional justice work because they allow for the democratization of dreadful secrets, enabling combustible memories and buried knowledges to be excavated and shared in the public domain. While storytelling in truth commission work may allow victims, perpetrators and communities to construct collective memories of the past as a prelude to national repair, truth commissions in their focus on reconciliation have also been critiqued for fostering impunity, eroding human rights, trivializing violations, and failing to provide “real” justice to victims.
This conference will examine truth-seeking and reconciliation as an exercise in storytelling. We are interested in exploring certain questions: What kinds of stories are told in truth commission hearings and other transitional justice processes? Who tells these stories and how are they recounted? What kinds of rhetorical strategies are deployed by the narrators – victims, perpetrators, or witnesses – in telling their stories, and what are the effects of these modes of telling? How are these stories reported by the media? What are the discourses embedded in the varied narratives of the reconciliation actors? How do the public performances or dramatizations of story-telling function to further or hinder justice, healing and state-building?
We invite scholars from across disciplines interested in addressing these questions to submit proposals to join us at this conference. We are seeking proposals that explore the following sub-topics:
• Fictions of National Healing and Reconciliation
• Stories as the New Archives in the Era of Truth Commissions
• Popular and Media Representations of Transitional Justice
• Theatre, Performance, and Questions of National Reconciliation
• Narratives of Women in Truth Commissions
• Indigenous Narratives of Transitional Justice
• Youth Narratives and Generational Contestations
• Photography, Spectacle and the Staging of National Reconciliation
• Literature, Testimony and Memorialization
• Cultural Representations and Nation-making
Please email proposals/ abstracts and a short CV by April 20, 2020 to: Dr. Melike Yilmaz: yilmam2@mcmaster.ca
Limited funding is available to assist scholars from the Global South with travel costs
Organized by the Confronting Atrocity Project, the Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice, the Centre for Community Engaged Narrative Arts and the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University, Canada
Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh – McMaster University, Canada (Project Director)
Dr. Paul Ugor – Illinois State University, USA (Conference Lead)
Dr. Melike Yilmaz – McMaster University, Canada (Research Coordinator)
Contact Info:
Dr. Melike Yilmaz (Research Coordinator)
Email: yilmam2@mcmaster.ca
For more information about the Conference and Confronting Atrocity Project