Call for Papers: Guernica(s) International Congress

The consolidated research group MHLI (IT1579-22) of the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea is pleased to announce the celebration of the International Congress Gernika(k)/Guernica(s). Resemanticisations of a historical trauma, which will take place on 13 and 14 June 2024. The aim will be to reflect on the cultural representations of the bombing of the Biscayan town, as well as the remediations that Pablo Picasso’s well-known painting has known.

The list of plenary speakers is a clear reflection of the multidisciplinary approach chosen for our International Congress. The conference will be attended by specialists in political and historical studies such as Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Technische Universität Berlin); the historian and director of the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Xabier Irujo Ametzaga; experts in contemporary Basque literature such as Maria Jose Olaziregi Alustiza (UPV/EHU, Director of the MHLI Research Group), professionals in Art History, Cultural Studies and curatorship such as Jorge Luís Marzo (BAU, Centre Universitari de Disseny) and art historian and member of the MNCARS project “Repensar Guernica” Rocío Robles Tardío (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Along with these scholars, the MHLI External Partners Dolores Vilavedra (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela), Maitane Ostolaza (Université de Perpignan), Iker González-Allende (University of Nebraska), Estibalitz Ezkerra (Arizona State University) and María Oianguren (Gernika Gogoratuz) complete the constellation of experts invited to this event.

This selection of key speakers encourages an exchange between the future participants as rich and diverse in their approaches, methodologies and disciplines as that reflected in the proposed plenary lectures themselves. Gernika, as an event and as a memorial space, “insists and survives”, as Santner would have said; it reverberates and vibrates, endowed with “multiple lives”, as Roberto Calasso might have told us. It is endowed both the event and the artistic device, ultimately, with a kind of afterlife alla Warburg that seems to be a multiple, iconographic, artistic, memorial and political survival, which demands and underpins the meeting between experts and specialists from multiple disciplines such as the one here promoted.

The International Congress will be completed with a series of guided tours through the places of conflict and memory with the participation of the Gernika Peace Museum. This institution will host a temporary exhibition during the same dates, curated by the team of specialists from the MHLI, and following an equivalent thematic in strict dialogue with the congress itself.

They invite interested parties to submit and participate with their paper proposals for this ambitious academic exchange around the following thematic axes:

1: Gernika as lieux de mémoire. The relevance of places of memory such as the Biscayan town acquires importance in the present time and demands, under the constant threat of the Zeitgeist of anti-memory, alternative facts and liquid truth, an academic review and an exchange between specialists from all disciplines. This thematic axis will focus on Gernika as a space for the gestation of memory(s) or as the origin of contested memories or competing memories. In such context, we foster eventual approaches that might analyse Gernika as a space with the capacity to remember and to remember itself; as a Mahnung, as warning or admonition, specifically, not only as a living memory that spreads its trauma in the collective memory, but also as a warning of similar events to come.

2: Gernika, political significance. In this case, we welcome proposals that focus specifically on the transcendence of the traumatic event beyond its symbolic importance and its repercussions in the very temporal space in which it took place during the Civil War. Gernika shall be approached, in such context, as Tatort (“place of crime”, in this case, cultural homicide and collective homicide) which has also been a space for the gestation of the political, a locus that has generated a whole series of narratives –political, identity-based– that far transcend the conflict of the Spanish Civil War.

3: Gernika as an artistic device. This thematic area aims to accommodate and address any reflection in dialogue with disciplines such as Art History, Cultural Studies, the history of images and iconography, focusing not on the political event or on the physical or symbolic memorial space, but on Picasso’s work and its international repercussions. Analysing its validity and survival as an artefact capable of evoking a narrative and an anti-war discourse in constant change, capable of adapting indefinitely, of continually developing.

4: The resemanticisations of Gernika. Deeply related with the previous thematic area: we particularly encourage proposals around Picasso’s Guernica on the basis of its survivals, reflecting on the capacity of the artistic device to become an icon, to reappear, to reverberate and vibrate, at other moments, in further spaces; in dissimilar places marked by conflict or by social, political, civic, cultural or identity claims.

5: The other Gernika(s). Any approach that proposes a strictly comparative study. In this case, proposals which focus on the territorial scope of the Basque Country –Otxandio, Durango– as well as others which transcend temporally or geographically the specific context of military operations, punishment or state terrorism in or on Basque territory during the Civil War.

6: Beyond Gernika: vibrations in the Iberian Peninsula. This thematic axis aims to host different types of proposals –mainly, but not exclusively, related with literature and Memory Studies– that reflect on the vibrating capacities of Gernika and following Calasso’s inspiring asseverations, its possibilities of “reverberation and reappearance”, living “other lives” in territories and literary spaces beyond the Basque sphere. They particularly welcome case studies focusing on the presence of the traumatic memory of Gernika, understood here as an activating device of memories and counter-memories in other Iberian literatures.

7: Gernika(s) in Education: we particularly welcome contributions addressing the relevance of education and didactics in the transmission of memory and the construction of democratic societies. Case studies focused on innovative educational proposals analysing entanglements between memory and art will be particularly welcome.

Proposals and deadlines for submission of papers:

– Paper proposals (title and abstract of about 250 words, including a reference to the thematic axis where the proposal would take place), written in Basque, Spanish (in both circumstances an English version shall be added) or English (in such case the translation to Spanish or Basque should be included) will be sent together with a brief bibliographic note (10 lines maximum) before 29 February 2024 (proposal form: https://acortar.link/U5D6TE), via provided platform on the conference website (see QR code and link at the end of the document).

– The ponency (15 minutes long) will be carried out in Basque, Spanish or English; there will be no simultaneous translation, so the visual resources (PPT) must be projected in one of the two languages not used for the presentation

Publication:

– A selection of the submitted papers (ponency in written version) is planned to be published in a reputable publishing house (SPI, Q1).

– The deadline for submission of papers for publication is 02/09/2024.

– For their possible publication, the revised versions of the papers must comply with the editorial rules that will soon be available on the congress website (see QR or link at the end of the document).

– Proposals should be sent, in the format indicated on the congress website, to the following adresses: miguel.rivas@ehu.eus and ana.gandara@ehu.eus.

Registration: Dates:

– Dates for registration as a speaker: 15/02/2024-30/02/2024.

– Dates for registration as an attendee: 01/12/2024-30/04/2024.

Fees:

– The Early Bird general registration fee for speakers is 100€ until 30/02/2024 (50€ for students and unemployed), and 150€ after the aforementioned deadline. – The Early Bird general fee for attendees not presenting a paper is 75€ until 30/02/2024 (40€ for students and unemployed) and 100€ after the aforementioned deadline.

Key dates:

– 01/12/2023: registration opening as an attendee.

– 29/02/2024: deadline for submission of paper proposals.

– ?/?/2024: confirmation of acceptance of paper.

– 15/02/2024: registration opening as a speaker.

– 30/02/2024: deadline for registration of speakers.

– 30/02/2024: deadline for the Early Bird registration fees.

– 30/04/2024: deadline for registration as an attendee.

– 02/09/2024: deadline for submission of an article for its potential publication.

For more information, please visit:Gernika(k)/Guernica(s) International Congress – MHLI