

 MENU

Atelier Ideas & Research

09/04/2020 GIOVANNA CAMPOBASSO [CALL FOR PAPERS]

15/04/20 – CFC “Edited Volume on Holocaust

in Popular Culture”

Check other recent calls and fellowships. Keep updated on Twitter and Facebook.

W H AT
Call for Chapter Proposals: Holocaust in Popular Culture

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 15 April 2020

TOPICS
Concept Note:

“The Final Solution” to the so-called Jewish Question as designed by the Nazi perpetrators,
involving the systematic state-sponsored killing of 6 million Jews, left an indelible mark on
involving the systematic state-sponsored killing of 6 million Jews, left an indelible mark on
human history. Since then, the Holocaust has entered the public consciousness and through
educational institutions and culture industry, it has increasingly become a crucial part of
academic and political discourse. Academic engagement has often played a crucial role in
unfolding literary representations through systematic pedagogy. A major way of engaging with
the Holocaust has been interdisciplinarity wherein literature, politics, and history have, by
default, been intertwined. The interface between Holocaust and Popular Culture, with its
emphasis on the visual – has, however, contributed largely to the expansion of Holocaust
studies in recent times. The proliferation of movies, graphic narratives, video games, memes,
advertisements etc, on the subject of Holocaust, has indeed revolutionized academic
pedagogy within the space of the classroom as it has also contributed to the dissemination of
Holocaust narratives outside the academic space.

Nonetheless, the artistic representation of the Holocaust has been debated from the very
beginning. Adorno’s remark, “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”, has allegedly affected
the poetics of someone like Paul Celan in particular, but at the same time, it has also brought to
the forefront the ethics of representing the Holocaust. In fact, the production of documentaries
like Night and Fog encountered an impasse because of mimetic impossibility. This problem
was all the more intensified the moment the subject of the Holocaust entered the domain of
popular culture. The seriocomic aspect of popular culture has been considered by some as an
offence to the victims while it is this very aspect that played a crucial role in mass awareness.
The employment of humour in Life is Beautiful (1997) has been criticised as a form of disrespect
to the victims, while the use of slapstick comedy in The Great Dictator (1940) has been
celebrated as a tool of resistance. Similar cases can be traced where the subtext of the
Holocaust has been used in various art forms. Tatiana Navka’s Holocaust- themed ice-dance to
the song “Beautiful That Way” invited harsh responses, while Adolek Kohn’s survivor’s dance “I
will survive Auschwitz” on the remains of concentration camps sparked outrage. Certain
instances of taking selfie on the memorial sites and posting the same on social media have also
triggered unending debates.

Focusing on the theme of Holocaust in Popular Culture, the volume aims to address these

following aspects:

Political: Holocaust has become a glocal discourse in the sense that it is not only remembered
as a thing of the past but also compared to transnational human tragedies, ethnic cleansing,
as a thing of the past but also compared to transnational human tragedies, ethnic cleansing,
and genocides. Added to that, it is intriguing to find out how we make sense of terms like
Fascism, Neo-Nazism, Antisemitism which have entered the political rhetoric of our times.
Thus, the historicity and contemporaneity of the Holocaust in the context of world politics
could be discussed and debated.

Aesthetic: How do we respond to the use of the Holocaust in popular culture? Does Holocaust
demand a new form of aesthetics? Can art capture the traumatic experience of the victims in
the concentration camps? These questions could be addressed to understand the
im/possibility of aesthetic representation of arguably the most tragic event in human history.

Pedagogic: Although popular culture has often been neglected in mainstream academia, its
presence in institutional curricula has contributed immensely to Holocaust Studies. It has also
been imperative in shaping ‘Memory Studies’ which is largely derived from but not limited to
the event of the Holocaust, and which has lately come into prominence as one of the emerging
fields of research.

Ethical: Revisiting Holocaust would undoubtedly involve questions pertaining to ethics of

remembering and forgetting, denial of the Holocaust, the ethical justification provided by the
Nazi perpetrators (Hitler as Übermensch), and the suspension of the ethical as experienced by
the victims in the concentration camps.

Paper proposals are invited in the following suggested areas which include, but are not limited
to:

-Holocaust in Literature
-Holocaust in Cinema and TV Series
-Holocaust in Graphic Narratives
-Holocaust in Social Media

-Holocaust in Advertisements
-Holocaust in Video Games
-Holocaust in Dance and Music
-Holocaust in Painting and Photography
-Holocaust and contemporary politics
-Holocaust and parallel human tragedies
-Holocaust and Tourism

The edited book will be organized into theme-based sections emerging from submissions. In
case of any query, please write to the editors: Dr Mahitosh Mandal
at mahitosh.eng@presiuniv.ac.in and Priyanka Das at priyanka.eng@presiuniv.ac.in

On acceptance, full chapters of 5000-6000 words are to be submitted by 31 July 2020.

Dr Mahitosh Mandal, Assistant Professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata, is the

author of the book Jacques Lacan: From Clinic to Culture (Orient BlackSwan, 2018). His PhD
thesis is titled “Vivekananda and the Question of the Other: A Critique of Alterity and
Subalternity.” He specializes in Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Dalit studies, and Holocaust studies.

Priyanka Das, Assistant Professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata, is a scholar of

Popular Culture and teaches science fiction, critical theory and Holocaust in literature. Her M.
Phil dissertation was on the objectification of Male Body in Bollywood Movies and
Advertisements. Her PhD is on the politics of visuality in the popular Television show Game of
Thrones.

Contact Info:
Dr Mahitosh Mandal & Professor Priyanka Das

Assistant Professors, Department of English, Presidency University, Kolkata

A P P L I C AT I O N
Notification of Acceptance: 30 April 2020

Abstracts not exceeding 300 words along with a bionote of 100 words should be sent
to holocaustpopcult@gmail.com

Please mention “Abstract_ Holocaust” as the subject line of your email.

Fro any question: TheOtherMeToos@gmail.com

WH AT WE D O || WHO W E ARE | | JOIN AIR PROJECT.

Share this:

! " # $ % &

TAGGED #CFC, #ENG, ANTHROPOLOGY, COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM, COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE, CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, ETHICS, FEMINISM, GENDER STUDIES,
GERMAN STUDIES, HISTORY OF WOMEN, JEWISH STUDIES, LITERARY STUDIES / LITERATURE,
MEDIA / SOCIAL MEDIA / MEDIA STUDIES, MEMORIAL PLACES, MEMORY, MIGRATION AND
DIASPORA, MODERN / CONTEMPORARY HISTORY, PHILOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, POPULAR CULTURE / FAN CULTURE, RELIGION / INTER-RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Leave a Reply

Enter your comment here...

← 13/05/20 – COLOGNE (DE). PREDOC SCHOLARSHIPS IN THE

HUMANITIES

CARTES, ATLAS ET PLANS: UN RECENSEMENT DES ARCHIVES DIGITALES →

GRATUITES, #4

Supportaci con Satispay!

 Get your weekly dose of academic opportunities
No pain, just mail: our weekly newsletter about academic opportunities & jobs,
scholarships, CFPs, and resources.

Jane

Doe

Jane@doe.com

Submit

Tools & Tricks to improve your work

Most read

1 31/10/20 – (SK) – Research grants in every discipline in Slovakia

2 10/11/20 – Ghent (BE). Teaching Assistant in African languages and cultures

3 15/11/20 – Tarragona (ES). 31 PhD positions in multiple research fields

4 15/01/20 – Pavia (IT). CFP student conference “Conflicting subjects: Between Clash
and Recognition”

5 15/11/20 – Call for chapters “Walls Have Ears: Historical, Cultural and Literary
Barriers”

6 30/11/20 – CFP on protest and periodicals

Our posts

AIR - Atelier Ideas & …

3,099 likes

Liked Sign Up

AIR - Atelier Ideas &

Research
circa un'ora fa

14/12/20 - CFP (online). "Fictions of

Retranslations: Retranslating Language
and Style in Prose Fiction"
https://www.air4edu.com/…/14-12-20-
cfp-online-fictions-of-…/
 Our Tweets

air4edu
@air4edu

14/12/20 - CFP (online). "Fictions of Retranslations: Retranslating

Language and Style in Prose Fiction" air4edu.com/call-for-paper…

14/12/20 – CFP (online). “Fictions of Retranslations: Retran…

Post by @air4edu.
air4edu.com

Categories
[Call for papers] (857)
[Digital collections, tools and archives] (33)
[Open Access databases] (27)

[Scholarships & fellowships] (367)

[Survival tips & strategies] (25)
[Useful software] (29)
[workshops] (11)

OUR PARTNERS

Aisna Graduates
Fondazione Carlo Donat-Cattin
Istituto di studi storici Gaetano Salvemini
Istituto Gramsci Torino
Levantine Heritage Foundation
OUR LATEST

14/12/20 – CFP (online). “Fictions of Retranslations: Retranslating Language and Style in Prose
Fiction”
13/11/2020

29/01/21 – Cornell Univ. (USA). Funded Graduate Seminar “Beyond Cultural Studies and Critical
Theory”
12/11/2020

10/01/21 – St. Louis (USA). Friedman Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies

11/11/2020

SEARCH

Search … 

VOLUNTEER WITH US

Twitter, Facebook, and articles: all this needs maintenance and a bit of teamwork. If you’re

interested in writing with us, get in touch!

FOLLOW US ON:

CONTACTS

Feel free to write us at air4edu@gmail.com

Or contact us directly:

Anna Lisa Somma,

Giovanna Campobasso,
Edoardo Frezet,
Giorgia Riconda.
PROUDLY POWERED BY WORDPRESS | AIR4EDU.COM