Past Futures. Historical Approaches to the Analysis of Uncertainties and Ruptures", 29-30th of September 2022, Innsbruck, Austria
Conference organized by the SIEF-Working-Group „Historical Approaches in Cultural Analysis” and the Department of History and European Ethnology of the University of Innsbruck
29-30th of September 2022, Innsbruck, Austria
Photo by Hadija Saidi on Unsplash
Registration: Conference participation (on-site or virtual) free of charge, but please send email with your interest to konrad.kuhn@uibk.ac.at
Crises have not only been omnipresent since the global Covid pandemic, rather they have also shaped the everyday "life of the many" in the past. The conference on "past futures" will take a historical perspective on cultural processes and strategies of adaptation to ruptures and crises in past eras. Starting from the very uncertainty of our present days experienced by all of us during the last years, the conference asks how crisis experiences were processed in the past and how possible futures were designed against this background. During the last years, there has been an increasing preoccupation with questions of future references in cultural studies and European Ethnology. These (mostly constructivist) approaches ask about the discursive and practical production of the future, about the function of future concepts in the present and the past or about the way in which the future is to be made plannable or expectable. Building on these ongoing debates, we ask for the manifold strategies of imagining the future in lifeworlds and everyday life to deal with, adopt and conceptualize uncertainties. Such "past futures" can show up in diverse sources and in broad empirical material, for example in narrative contexts, correspondences and letters, protocols, scientific texts but also in first-person documents. The conference is thus interested in the manifold possibilities of “common people” reacting to ruptures, threats, dangers and challenges in their everyday lives by imagining futures, writing them down, or even making them concrete in their lives by realising them in various practices.
To what extent can references to the future be understood as coping with crises? What temporal ideas of order for dealing with ruptures can be found in the past? Which everyday source genres provide information about lifeworld strategies for coping with crises? In what way do references to the past enable future viability?
The conference chooses a broad temporal focus (from the 17th century to contemporary history/present) and a geographically wide range. Different scholars with a background in (but not limited to) European Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History and its sub-disciplines or Literature Sciences will question their material within the perspective of „past futures“.
Programm (download in pdf-format)
Thursday, 29 September 2022
10:00 SIEF-Working Group Meeting
“Historical Approaches in Cultural
Analysis”
Pre-Conference-Meeting for members
of the HACA-WG
(Room: 52U109SR, open to anyone
interested)
12:00 Lunch break (individual)
13:30 Arrival and get-together
14:00–14:15 Opening Remarks
Anna Buchheim (Vice-Rector,
University of Innsbruck, Austria)
Konrad Kuhn (University of Innsbruck,
Austria)
14:15–15:30 Session I
Years without history. Female futures in the
aftermath of the Second World War
Anna Leyrer (University of Vienna,
Austria)
Creating the present and imagining the
future in Warsaw during the Revolution if
1905
Clara M. Frysztacka (European University
Viadrina Frankfurt/ Oder, Germany)
15:30–16:00 Coffee break
16:00–17:15 Session II
Crisis in Past Futures: Eugène Pittard and
Anthropology in Turkey in the 1930s
Hande Birkalan Gedik (Goethe University
Frankfurt, Germany)
Did sixteenth-century merchants never let a
good crisis go to waste?
Jeroen Puttevils (University of Antwerp,
Belgium)
17:15–18:45 Break and individual city-walk
18:45 Conference-Dinner at Restaurant
Glasmalerei
Friday, 30 June 2022
09:00–09:30 Arrival and Coffee
09:30–10:45 Session III
Cyclical Repetition or an Open Future?
A Future Horizon During an Outbreak of the
Plague in the 16th Century
Max-Quentin Bischoff (University of
Antwerp, Belgium)
Nineteenth-Century Cholera Epidemics in
Sweden from Popular Perspective
Anders Gustavsson (University of Oslo,
Norway)
10:45–11:15 Coffee break
11:15–12:30 Session IV
The concept of a normal life in
Yugonostalgic memory narratives
Milica Popović (Central European
University Vienna, Austria)
Negotiating the future from below.
The diary of a 19th century miller
Katre Kikas (Estonian Literary Museum
Tartu, Estonia)
12:30–13:30 Lunch break (individual)
13:30–14:45 Session V
“No heritage, no Future”: Time and Loss in
Beirut
Katarzyna Puzon (LMU Munich, Germany)
“Won’t you burn out on a holiday in
tropics?”: Social and systemic denial of a
burnout society (and individual)
Mateja Habinc (University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia)
14:45–15:15 Coffee break
15:15–16:00 Wrap up and future plans
16:00 Optional get-together at “Uni Café
Innsbruck“
Webconference-Link (https://webconference.uibk.ac.at/b/kon-7pt-ypw-v0t) for those taking part in a remote mode.
Accomodation/Hotel:
Hotel Engl, Innstraße 22, 6020 Innsbruck
Tel.: +43 (0) 512 283112
office@hotel-engl.at
www.hotel-engl.at
Concept and organisation:
Department of History and European Ethnology / University of Innsbruck
together with:
SIEF-Working Historical Approaches in Cultural Analysis (https://www.siefhome.org/wg/haca/index.shtml)
Contact:
Ass.-Prof. Priv.-Doz. Dr. Konrad Kuhn
Department of History and European Ethnology
University of Innsbruck
Innrain 52d, AT-6020 Innsbruck
konrad.kuhn@uibk.ac.at
Corona/Covid:
Please check the university homepage for the latest information on Covid 19-measures: https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/newsroom/information-on-the-corona-virus/