Conference: "Reimagining Europe from Its Peripheries"

About the Conference

“The European Union, given the level of its integration and ambition, cannot be in the short term the only means of structuring the European continent,” French president Emmanuel Macron declared in 2021, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The goal of “Reimagining Europe from Its Peripheries,” is to examine the political and cultural “structuring” of European belonging, from the perspective of its ever-shifting, often-precarious, peripheries—and its peripheral subjects. As historian Richard Ivan Jobs has recently noted, “there are currently efforts across the Schengen zone to reinstitute border controls to slow the movement of immigrants, who have grown in number and visibility in the last decade as conditions of daily life have deteriorated on the southern and eastern peripheries of Europe.” Participants in our conference will consider how various forms of sectarian conflict, nationalism, and imperialism have shaped and reshaped who is isolated, integrated and excluded from Europe, as conceptions of “the European continent,” and its “peripheries,” have changed over time and space.

Though historical in scope, this conference will be multidisciplinary in character, and will bring in policymakers and other practitioners as well. Presenters will discuss the role of the environment and geography in guiding refugees and mass-migration into Europe. Panels and keynotes will analyze the complex legacies of empire and white settler colonialism, demonstrating how these histories interrelate with popular, dehumanizing, misuses of the past. Finally, several presentations will illuminate the broader literary and cultural dimensions of these topics and themes, by analyzing how portrayals of racial (and other forms of) difference have influenced the tenets of Europeanization in the modern era.

Attending the Conference

All sessions are free and open to the Notre Dame community.

Registration is recommended. Please complete the registration form to mark your reservation.

Register to Attend

Schedule

Thursday, April 27, 2023

5:30 p.m. - Opening Keynote Address
McKenna Hall, Rooms 215-16
Zahia Rahmani, Director of the Art History and Globalization Research Program, National Institute for Art History (INHA-Paris)

Friday, April 28, 2023

9:00 a.m. - Session I - Marking Difference
McKenna Hall, Rooms 215-16

11:00 a.m. - Keynote Address
McKenna Hall, Rooms 215-16
Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English, Emeritus, Harvard University

1:30 p.m. - Session II - Social Contracts
McKenna Hall, Rooms 215-16

3:30 p.m. - Keynote Address
McKenna Hall, Rooms 215-16
Peter Gatrell, Professor of Migration & Economic History, University of Manchester

7 p.m. - Film Screening of "KLONDIKE"
Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
Directed by Maryna Er Gorbach (with the event featuring a conversation with the director)
Not Rated, 100 minutes
In Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, and Dutch with English subtitles

Saturday, April 29, 2023

9:00 a.m. - Session III - Slavery, Borders and Empire
McKenna Hall, Rooms 215-16

10:40 a.m. - Session IV - Uncollected Memories
McKenna Hall, Room B02

Participants

Jean Beaman, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
Jean-Pierre Gauci, Arthur Watts Senior Fellow, British Institute of International and Comparative Law
Daniel Makonnen, European Commission
Tommaso Manfredini, Department of French and Institute for Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Julie Morrissey, Postdoctoral Scholar, Maynooth University
Tessa Murphy, Associate Professor of History, Syracuse University
Vanessa D. Plumly, Assistant Professor of German, Wittenberg University
Cynthia D. Porter, Assistant Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University
Emrah Sahin, Center for European Studies, University of Florida
Lauren Stokes, Assistant Professor of History, Northwestern University
Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, Associate Professor of French, Director, Middle East and North African Studies, Tulane University

Organizers

Korey Garibaldi
Assistant Professor of American Studies
Faculty Fellow, Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Francisco E. Robles
Assistant Professor of English and Concurrent Assistant Professor of Gender Studies
Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Latino Studies

Perin Gürel
Associate Professor of American Studies and Concurrent Associate Professor of Gender Studies
Faculty Fellow, Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Liu Institute for Asia & Asian Studies, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies