Conference Program  link

All events take place in the Oak Room of the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU), 900 E. Seventh St., Bloomington, IN 47405,  unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, April 19

Pre-Conference Public Lectures

3:30 p.m. Adam Michnik, Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, Poland, and Visiting Professor of History at Princeton University: public lecture Poland and Germany: The Return of Bad Memories (IMU, Dogwood Room)

5:30 p.m. His Excellency Janusz Reiter, Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to the U.S.: public lecture (IMU, Dogwood Room)

Opening Reception

7:00 p.m. Opening reception: welcoming remarks by Dean Patrick O’Meara and conference organizers from Indiana University: Justyna Beinek (conference chair) and Bill Johnston (IMU, University Club, Faculty Room)

Friday, April 20

All Friday and Saturday sessions take place in the Oak Room at the Indiana Memorial Union.

9:15 a.m. His Excellency Janusz Reiter, Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to the U.S.: welcoming remarks.

Panel 1: National Identities
9:30–11 a.m.

Heidi Hein-Kircher, Herder Institute, Marburg, Germany, From the People’s Republic to Third Republic: Remembrance and New Identity?

Wanda Jarząbek, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, Shadows of Memory and the German Question in Polish Politics 1989–2006

Michael Meng, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Whose Victims? Remembering the Warsaw (Ghetto) Uprising, 1945–1968

Moderators:     Beate Sissenich, Indiana University
                            Regina Smyth, Indiana University

Panel 2: Representing Memory
11:15 a.m.–1 p.m.

Przemysław Czapliński, The Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, Declaring a War: Contemporary Polish Prose Fiction and the Memory of WWII

Marek Zaleski, Institute for Literary Studies (IBL), Warsaw, Poland, Liberation of Memory? Post-Memory or Camp-Memory? On What Is a Messenger Girl Doing?  by Darek Foks and Zbigniew Libera

Bożena Karwowska, University of British Columbia, Canada, German Female Characters in Polish Postwar Literature: Antagonistic (National) Identities and “Female” Memories

Petra Fachinger, Queen’s University, Canada, Poland and Post-Memory in Second-Generation German Jewish Writing

Moderators:     Claudia Breger, Indiana University
                            Fritz Breithaupt, Indiana University

Lunch Break: 1–2 p.m.

Panel 3: Flight and Expulsions
2–3:30 p.m.

Paweł Lutomski, Stanford University, Who Are the Victims and Who Are the Perpetrators? Polish Expulsions of Germans as a Case of Moral Ambiguity

Christian Lotz, The Leipziger Circle: Forum for Scholarship and the Arts, Germany, Expulsion and the Politics of Memory

Magdalena Marszałek, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, Memories on Stage: The Theater Project “Transfer” by Jan Klata

Moderators:     Mark Roseman, Indiana University
                            Timothy Waters, Indiana University School of Law

Panel 4: Reconciliation and the Other
3:45–5:30 p.m.

Annika Frieberg, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Reconciliation Remembered: Early Activists in the Polish–German Relations

Piotr Kosicki, Princeton University, Polish Catholics’ Path to Germany: Historical Memory, Transnational Intellectual Networks, and the Polish Bishops’ Letter of 1965

Stefan Guth, University of Bern, Switzerland, Friendship by Decree: The Commission of Historians of the German Democratic Republic and the People’s Republic of Poland 1956–1990

David Pickus, Arizona State University, Not Another Other: Re-Thinking the German Image of Poland

Moderators:    Jack Bielasiak, Indiana University
                           Maximilian Eiden, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Special Session: 5:45–6:45 p.m.

Breon Mitchell, Indiana University, Oskar’s New Tin Drum: Günter Grass and Literary Translation

Saturday, April 21

Panel 5: Strategizing Memory
9:30–11:15 a.m.

Angelika Bammer, Emory University, Nostalgia

Hanna Gosk, Warsaw University, Poland, Aspects of Identity-Formation in the Dialogue with the Other: A Literary Version of Polish–German Relations in 20th-Century Polish Fiction

Jessie Labov, Stanford University, Nothing to Fear but Gross Himself

Joanna Kędzierska Stimmel, Middlebury College, One Past, Two Histories: Tracing/Inventing the Holocaust Past in Texts by Monika Maron and Jarosław M. Rymkiewicz

Moderators:     Maria Bucur, Indiana University
                            Irena Grudzińska Gross, Boston University

Panel 6: Tourism’s Memory
11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Erica Lehrer, University of Washington, Of Mice, Cats, and Pigs: Postmemorial Relations in the Jewish–German–Polish Troika

Imke Hansen, University of Hamburg, Germany, Who Owns Auschwitz? Conflicting Memories and the Instrumentalisation of the Holocaust: German, Jewish, and Polish Perspectives

Bryoni Trezise, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, Postcards from Auschwitz: Tourism’s Memory

Moderators:     Darcy Buerkle, Smith College
                            Jeff Veidlinger, Indiana University

Lunch Break: 1–2 p.m.

Panel 7: Local Identities
2–3:30 p.m.

Anna Muller, Indiana University, To Become a “Gdańszczanin”—The Process of Constructing Post-War Polish Gdańsk through the Prism of Oral History and Memory Studies

Gregor Thum, University of Pittsburgh, The Rediscovery of Prussia: Searching for the Local Past in Poland and Germany

Winson Chu, University of California, Berkeley, The Lodzer Mensch: From Cultural Contamination to Marketable Multiculturalism

Moderators:    Robert Nelson, University of Windsor, Canada
                           Barbara Skinner, Indiana State University

Panel 8: Spatial Narratives
3:45–5:15 p.m.

Aleksandra Galasińska, University of Wolverhampton, Great Britain, Once upon a Time on the River Neisse: Temporal Indexicality in Photo-Elicited Narratives from a Polish Border Town

Andrew Asher, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,  In the Absence of History: Inventing Transnational Space in the Border Cities of Frankfurt (Oder), Germany and Słubice, Poland

Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland, WWII and Germans in Past and Present Polish Landscape of Memory. Jedwabne and Wizna: A Case Study

Moderators:     Mateusz Hartwich, Berlin School for Comparative European History, Germany
                            Margaret Wojtunik, Queen’s University, Canada

Sunday, April 22

Final Roundtable: Future Projects and Transatlantic Cooperation
9:30–11 a.m.

Moderators:     Justyna Beinek, Indiana University 
                            Kristin Kopp, University of Missouri, Columbia
                            Joanna Niżyńska, Harvard University

Brunch: 11 a.m. – noon