Dr.Priiya Wadhera, French Program

I want to share the good news about Priya's research, she has been invited to  the following project. Priya congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Priya,

I hope this mail finds you well! Unfortunately I will not be able to make it to the CFFS colloquium this year. The theme is extremely interesting, but I have a book launch here in Oslo on March 14. I nevertheless hope to be able to make it next year, for I have very good memories from last year’s colloquium in Providence.

I particularly appreciated your presentation on Perec, absence and the Holocaust, and this is why I am writing to you today. I am in the process of designing a research project with the preliminary title “Receptions of Memory”, and I was wondering if you would be interested to join this project? 

Currently, the research group consists of myself and two colleagues who are specialists on 18^thcentury literature (in France and in Great Britain), and we are seeking funding from a Norwegian research program which finances projects exploring how “[d]emocratic principles and individual human rights” are “under strong pressure” in today’s Europe.

Our main hypothesis is that one of the most serious threats against democracy and universal human rights in Europe today is the tendency to forget, suspend, simplify, excuse or rewrite history. We can see this in the xenophobia that characterizes nationalist and “euro-skeptic” movements in several European countries, as well as many “leave”-campaigners before the Brexit referendum; in the resurgence of anti-Semitism in France and in Belgium; in the instrumentalizing of people’s skepticism against “elites”, often with antidemocratic agendas, etc.

In “Receptions of Memory” we will therefore insist on the importance of

1) remembering the universal values of the Enlightenment and later emancipation movements, by focusing on today’s understanding of this period;

2) remembering periods in our recent history where these values were shattered, by focusing mainly on the Holocaust and colonization, and today’s reception of testimonies, biographies, literary texts and films exploring the theme of memory. 

These are the two “sub-projects”, in which we will study both factual and fictional narratives of memory.Even though there is today a great number of books, documents, and testimonies on memory, all these publications somehow do not always seem to reach, or be capable of reaching, the target audience. This is why we wish to have significant focus on the receptionof these texts.

I think your work on Perec would be very relevant for the second sub-project. The project is still on an early stage of planning, but I hope that it is understandable. I will be able to send you a more complete presentation in approximately two weeks, if you are interested in being part of the project (and I really do hope that you are!).

We will organize several workshops and two conferences, one of which will take place at the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies in Oslo. Contributions from both conferences will be published in an edited volume. We will also ask for funding for a PhD-student who will work within the second sub-project.

I wish you a great colloquium in Oklahoma City next week, and hope to see you again soon!

All the best,

Geir

Geir Uvsløkk
Associate Professor
French Literature and Area Studies
University of Oslo