What does 20 years mean when we are dealing with traumas of war? How do people symbolize the war, what kind of imaginary do they create when they try to make sense of what happened to them and their country, and how do they come to terms with their losses?

In the last years, I have visited both Srebrenica and St. Louis in Missouri, home of the largest community of Bosnian refugees in the US. The way these two communities deal with trauma is radically different. However, they strangely find similar dilemmas when they search for the remains of their loved ones with the help of forensic analysis.

Trauma, however, has not surpassed also the observers - the Dutch soldiers who witnessed the genocide and did nothing to prevent it. But did the other observers - the international community - learn anything from Srebrenica? Did not the lack of reflection on failure of intervention in Srebrenica, paradoxically, allow other future failures to multiply?

Renata Salecl is a philosopher and sociologist. She is Senior Researcher at the Institute of  Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia, professor at the School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London and Recurring Visiting Professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York. Salecl is the author of The Spoils of Freedom (Routledge 1994), (Per)versions of Love and Hate (Verso, 1998), On Anxiety (Routledge 2004), Tyranny of Choice (Profile Books 2010).  Her books have been translated into more than 10 languages.  She also writes commentaries for the leading daily newspaper Delo in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the last years, she has been named Slovenian Woman Scientist of the Year as well as Woman of the Year.

Co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, The Europe Center, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Ilamic Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Film and Media Studies Program in the Department of Art & Art History, Stanford Humanities Center, with funding from the US Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers program.

For more information on the conference, please visit here: Yugoslav Space Twenty Years After Srebrenica

To RSVP, please send email to luisrr@stanford.edu.  You may request a copy of the workshop paper at the same time.

On March 27, 1492, a few days before the Edict that expelled the Jews from Spain, the royal chronicler Alfonso de Palencia (1423-1492) published his Castilian translations of two works by the famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War and Against Apion.  Palencia’s volume, Guerra judaica con los libros contra Appion, thus exemplifies the tension between two facets of Josephus’s writing:  his fierce critique of Jewish sectarianism and stubborn resistance to Imperial order and his eloquent defence of their religious and cultural traditions. This paper explores the cultural and political significance of these Spanish translations in the light of the events leading up to 1492 and it considers whether Palencia appropriated this Romanized Jewish historian in order to open up a space for religious minorities in the new imperial order ushered in by the Catholic Monarchs. To do this, I read Palencia’s translations against other contemporary texts by and about Jews and conversos, and consider the marginalia of sixteenth-century readers found in extant copies of the 1492 edition.

The broader issues raised include: the ambivalent alignment between the ‘intellectual’ and the ‘State’ (both terms need to be historicised); anti-judaism as a ‘way of thinking’ (to borrow David Nirenberg’s term); the meaning and limits of early modern tolerance.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Perspectives of the Middle Ages workshop.

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, Stanford Humanities Center, Iberian and Latin American Cultures and the Department of Religious Studies.

Abstract

Convened by Professor Joel Beinin and Professor Robert Crews, this one-day conference will explore the global history of the Middle East and North Africa. The conference is chronologically delimited by two New York-centered financial panics that had substantial consequences for the Middle East and North Africa. While the region has long been engaged in global circuits of commerce, culture, and migration, this choice of chronological frame highlights the renewed salience of political economy in several academic disciplines.

Conference Program

8:45 -9:00 Welcoming Remarks

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Co-sponsored by the Department of History and The Europe Center.

This event has been cancelled. We will update our website once the new date has been determined.

In an effort to infuse Asian studies in the social studies and literature curricula, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), in cooperation with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA), is offering a professional development opportunity at Stanford University.

This all day workshop will focus on teaching about religion in China and Japan and the influence of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Participants will hear from top China and Japan scholars, engage in China and Japan related curriculum, and network with other local teachers.  This is the fourth seminar in a four part series.

In an effort to infuse Asian studies in the social studies and literature curricula, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), in cooperation with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA), is offering a professional development opportunity at Stanford University.

This all day workshop will focus on teaching about ancient China and the Silk Road. Participants will hear from top China scholars, engage in China related curriculum, and network with other local teachers.  This is the second seminar in a four part series.

In an effort to infuse Asian studies in the social studies and literature curricula, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), in cooperation with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA), is offering a professional development opportunity at Stanford University.

This all day workshop will focus on teaching about China's dynasties. Participants will hear from top China scholars, engage in China related curriculum, and network with other local teachers.  This is the first seminar in a four part series.

In an effort to infuse Asian studies in the social studies and literature curricula, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), in cooperation with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA), is offering a professional development opportunity at Stanford University.

This all day workshop will focus on teaching about issues Asian American face in contemporary society. This is the fourth workshop in a four part series.

In an effort to infuse Asian studies in the social studies and literature curricula, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), in cooperation with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA), is offering a professional development opportunity at Stanford University.

This all day workshop will focus on teaching about Korea in the social studies classroom. Participants will hear from top Korea scholars, engage in Korea related curriculum, and network with other local teachers.  This is the third workshop in a four part series.