This is the web page of research project Witnessing Destruction: The Memory of War and Conflict in American Auto/biographical and Documentary Narratives. The project is supported by grant no. 38/2018, PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-0697, offered by UEFISCDI (project coordinator: Mihaela Precup; members: Dragoș Manea, Dana Mihăilescu, Roxana Oltean).
Brief Project Description
This project analyzes narratives that memorialize participation in war and conflict in a variety of auto/biographical and documentary genres (diary, memoir, autobiography, reportage, documentary film, oral testimony etc.) and media (traditional writing and reporting, but also multimodal media such as comics, video, and digital media) in order to explore the complicated mobility of individual and group memory, as well as the complexities of witnessing, recording, and reacting to one another’s suffering.
Our project thus asks questions such as: in the process of memorialization, how are concepts such as grief, trauma, and survival translated across cultures? How can the classification of participants in war and conflict into “victims,” “perpetrators,” “bystanders,” as well as “soldiers” and “civilians” be refined so that it contributes to a better understanding of what makes ordinary people commit evil deeds (Waller 2002)? How do mainstream definitions of concepts such as “genocide,” “heroism,” or “war crime” influence the way people experience and remember war and conflict? What counter memories are produced as a consequence? How do Western tropes of storytelling, suffering, and healing influence the narratives of both American and non-American stories? How do the requirements of a particular genre (such as memoir or documentary film) influence the way certain events are memorialized? What blind spots exist in the memorialization of war and conflict? How does suffering become sellable? Last, but not least, how do gender and sexuality play out in the context of war and conflict?
The limitations of the current approaches can be outlined by drawing attention to the main academic field to which this project belongs, i.e. memory studies. The discipline of memory studies has shifted away from Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory and Pierre Nora’s nation-centric model of memory (1984-1992) and into the study of cultural memory (Jan Assman 1988), the mediation and remediation of cultural memory (Erll and Rigney 2012), postmemory (Hirsch 1997), prosthetic memory (Landsberg 2004), multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009), postcolonial witnessing (Craps 2013) and is currently preoccupied with transnational and transcultural dialogues created by and during the process of memorialization (Crownshaw 2014), as well as globital memory (Reading 2016). However, despite the evident diversification of perceptions and interests, there are areas that should receive more critical attention in a field that has focused primarily on more traditional genres, such as the novel or the fiction film. Thus, this project proposes that, in the field of memory studies, more critical attention should be paid to autobiographical narratives, more specifically diaries and war memoirs produced by veterans and other direct witnesses to wars. This is an important point, particularly in the United States, where the memorialization of war and conflict through autobiographical and documentary practices is as old as colonization itself. However, the first event that generated the most sustained memorial effort as it was happening was the Civil War (1861-1865), which still ranks as the bloodiest armed conflict in American history (including World War I, II, and Vietnam). Having taken place after the invention of photography, the Civil War was documented in both verbal and visual form, in diaries, war veteran memoirs and reportage, and in photographic form. However, despite the existence of a wealth of autobiographical and documentary narratives on the subject, the critical focus has so far been placed on other memorial forms, such as monuments, reenactments, and—perhaps most of all—slave narratives. In this context, there are other topics that should be further analyzed, such as memorial literature produced by veterans of other major wars, such as World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and, more recently, in the wake of the 1990s memoir boom, Iraq and Afghanistan. Last but not least, it is worth noting that the autobiographical literature most analyzed by memory scholars is still Holocaust-related, in spite of Michael Rothberg’s attempt to place the memory of the Holocaust in a wider and more complex network of suffering (2009). In this context, in spite of the recent rise of perpetrator studies, the figure of the perpetrator still occupies a minor position in the field.
However, since this is an interdisciplinary project, it is clearly situated at the intersection of memory studies and other related fields, such as trauma theory, media studies, and visual studies. In these fields, research on the representation of war and conflict has focused not so much on the auto/biographical or the documentary, but rather on issues such as the representability of trauma, the narrative potential of photography, drawing, caricature, and video, and the inappropriate migration of certain Western notions of memory and trauma into non-Western cultural spaces. In this context, the project proposes a specific focus on multimodal documentary narratives such as digital media, documentary film, and graphic narrative. Thus, products of memorialization that have yet to be fully explored are documentary films by American filmmakers about destruction that takes place outside American borders, as well as graphic narratives produced by authors who flee warzones and conflict areas situated outside the US. Similarly, the memorial role played digital culture is as yet insufficiently explored, even as participants in war and conflict use comics, as well as social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, to document events for an audience that has largely given up on traditional media outlets as a main source of information.
Project Activities
- May 2018-December 2018
Conferences
Dragoș Manea
“From the War on Terror to the Refugee Crisis: Representing Vulnerability in Debi Cornwall’s Welcome to Camp America and Kate Evans’s Threads.”With Mihaela Precup. “Drawing Yourself In and out of It”: The Second Amsterdam Comics Conference. Vrije University, Amsterdam, November 15-17, 2018
“Class Warfare, Neoliberalism, and Graphic Documentation in The Black Monday Murders (Jonathan Hickman, 2016–).” With Mihaela Precup. The 2018 RAAS – Fulbright Conference Ideology, Identity, and the US: Crossroads, Freeways, Collisions. University of Constanța, October 4-6 2018.
“Documenting Detention: War, Conflict, and Photo/graphic Representation in Kate Evans’s Threads and Debi Cornwall’s Welcome to Camp America.” With Mihaela Precup. Comics Forum. Leeds Central Library, September 20-21 2018.
“Reviving the Memory of Nazi Danger: Über (2013–) and the Ethics of Ambiguity.” International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference 2018 Retro! Time, Memory, Nostalgia. Bournemouth University, June 27-29 2018.
“On Race and Warfare: The Politics of Historical Adaptation in Merlin (BBC, 2008–2012) and Camelot (Starz, 2011).” AICED 20, Literature and Cultural Studies Section: Truth(s) and Alternative Facts. University of Bucharest, June 7-9 2018.
Dana Mihăilescu
“Facets of Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity from World War I to World War II in Europe and the U.S.: On Will Eisner’s Graphic Memoir To the Heart of the Storm (1990).” The 2018 RAAS – Fulbright Conference Ideology, Identity, and the US: Crossroads, Freeways, Collisions. University of Constanța, October 4-6 2018.
Roxana Oltean
“Truth and Alternative Facts in the Early Cold War: Narratives of American Spying in Berlin.” AICED 20, Literature and Cultural Studies Section: Truth(s) and Alternative Facts. University of Bucharest, June 7-9 2018.
Mihaela Precup
“From the War on Terror to the Refugee Crisis: Representing Vulnerability in Debi Cornwall’s Welcome to Camp America and Kate Evans’s Threads.” With Dragos Manea. “Drawing Yourself In and out of It”: The Second Amsterdam Comics Conference. Vrije University, Amsterdam, November 15-17, 2018
“Class Warfare, Neoliberalism, and Graphic Documentation in The Black Monday Murders (Jonathan Hickman, 2016–).” With Dragoș Manea. The 2018 RAAS – Fulbright Conference Ideology, Identity, and the US: Crossroads, Freeways, Collisions. University of Constanța, October 4-6 2018.
“Documenting Detention: War, Conflict, and Photo/graphic Representation in Kate Evans’s Threads and Debi Cornwall’s Welcome to Camp America.” With Dragoș Manea. Comics Forum. Leeds Central Library, September 20-21 2018.
“A Communist Time Capsule: Andreea Chirică’s The Year of the Pioneer (2011).” International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference 2018 Retro! Time, Memory, Nostalgia. Bournemouth University, June 27-29 2018.
Publications
Precup, Mihaela (with Rebecca Scherr). Editorial. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 9(3), Special Issue on Sexual Violence in Comics II, pp. 193–194
At this early stage of the project, members have sent proposals for publication/are still working on proposals and in some cases are awaiting confirmation.
Oltean, Roxana. “Love and Belligerence Behind the Iron Curtain. Cold War Gender Identities in Anglo-American Perspective” – article submitted for publication in the academic journal Synergy (indexed in EBSCO (1/2017), ERIH PLUS (2/2015), Central and Eastern European European Online Library (CEEOL) (1/2005), Open J Gate (1/2005), Index Copernicus (2012), Open Access Journal Index (1/2005), Kubon & Sagner Media OPAC(1/2005)).
Precup, Mihaela. “I think we’re maybe more or less safe here”: Violence and Solidarity during the Lebanese Civil War in Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows — chapter accepted for publication in Violence in Comics, edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz. London & New York: Routledge, 2019
Precup, Mihaela. ”The Autobiographical Mode in Post-Communist Romanian Comics: Everyday Life in Brynjar Åbel Bandlien’s Strîmb Living and Andreea Chirică’s The Year of the Pioneer” — chapter accepted for publication in Comics of the New Europe, edited by Martha Kuhlman and Jose Alaniz. Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 2019.
Research Periods
Dragoș Manea–John F. Kennedy Institute Library, Freie University, Berlin, July 27-August 27
Roxana Oltean–Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, London, August 5 -12
Mihaela Precup–John F. Kennedy Institute Library, Freie University, Berlin, July 27-August 27
2. January-December 2019
Conferences
Dragoș Manea
“Perpetration and the Ethics of Complicity in The Black Monday Murders (Jonathan Hickman, 2016-). The 21st Annual International Conference of the English Department, ”Trauma, Narrative, Responsibility” (6-8 June, 2019)
Dana Mihăilescu
“The Thrusts of Ghost-Writing Eastern European Survivors’ Memories of the Holocaust in Post-Cold War Western Societies. On Sara Tuvel Bernstein’s The Seamstress and Leah Kaufman’s Live! Remember! Tell the World!” (Invited lecture at the Advanced Seminar Series, Center for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, 11 February 2019).
Mihaela Precup and Dragoș Manea
“’Every nation is a monster in the making’: Transmedia Storytelling and the Reclamation of Queer History in Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles .” The International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference, “Storyworlds and Transmedia Universes,” Manchester Metropolitan University, Marea Britanie, pe tema (24-28 iunie, 2019).
Publications
Manea, Dragoș. “Review of Transforming Cities: Discourses of Urban Change, edited by Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Nora Pleßke, and Eckart Voigts, Heidelberg. English Studies 700:7 (2019). ISSN: 0013-838X (ISI)
Mihăilescu, Dana. “Review of The Implicated Subject. Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, by Michael Rothberg.” [Inter]sections 22 (2019). ISSN: 2068-3472 (BDI: MLA Directory of Periodicals, Ulrichsweb, DOAJ, CEEOL si EBSCO )
Oltean, Roxana. “Love and Belligerence Behind the Iron Curtain. Cold War Gender Identities in Anglo-American Perspective.” Synergy 15.1 (2019): 7-24 (BDI: EBSCO (1/2017), ERIH PLUS (2/2015), Central and Eastern European European Online Library (CEEOL) (1/2005), Open J Gate (1/2005), Index Copernicus (2012), Open Access Journal Index (1/2005), Kubon & Sagner Media OPAC(1/2005)).
Oltean. Roxana. “’Special Relationship and Cold War.’ Transatlantic Narratives of Operation Stopwatch/Gold” (provisional title of chapter proposed for publication in edited volume War, Espionage, and Masculinity in British Fiction, Vernon Press).
Precup, Mihaela. “I think we’re maybe more or less safe here”: Violence and Solidarity during the Lebanese Civil War in Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows. Contexts of Violence in Comics, edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz. London & New York: Routledge, 2019.
Precup, Mihaela. The Graphic Lives of Fathers: Memory, Representation, and Fatherhood in North American Autobiographical Comics, forthcoming monograph (spring 2020), Palgrave Macmillan (Londra și New York), ISBN-ul 978-3-030-36217-1
Precup, Mihaela. ”The Autobiographical Mode in Post-Communist Romanian Comics: Everyday Life in Brynjar Åbel Bandlien’s Strîmb Living and Andreea Chirică’s The Year of the Pioneer” — chapter accepted for publication in Comics of the New Europe, edited by Martha Kuhlman and Jose Alaniz. Leuven: University of Leuven Press, forthcoming fall 2020. [not counted among results, since the date of publication post-dates the end of this project]
Dragos Manea and Mihaela Precup (eds.). Special issue on War and Conflict in Autobiographical and Documentary Narratives of [Inter]sections 22 (2019) — BDI: MLA Directory of Periodicals, Ulrichsweb, DOAJ, CEEOL si EBSCO
Research Periods
Dragoș Manea–John F. Kennedy Institute Library, Freie University, Berlin: August 1-30; British Library, London: 14-16 November.
Dana Mihailescu–Uppsala University Library, Sweden: 11-28 august.
Roxana Oltean–Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, London, 19-31 August
Mihaela Precup–John F. Kennedy Institute Library, Freie University, Berlin: August 1-30; British Library, London: 14-16 November.
3. January-April 2020
Conferences
Dragos Manea and Mihaela Precup. “’Who are you crying for?’: Sexual Abuse and the Ethics of Empathy in Nina Bunjevac’s Bezimena”
Round Table (April 15, 3.30pm-5.30pm)
Topic: Witnessing Destruction Round Table (UEFISDCI project no. 38/2018)
Time: Apr 15, 2020 03:30 PM Athens
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/770640902?
Meeting ID: 770 640 902
Password: 834948
Presenters (work-in-progress):
Dragos Manea and Mihaela Precup. “Complicity and the Process of Perpetration in Nina Bunjevac’s Bezimena”
Dana Mihailescu. “Representations of World War II in Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Book I (2017)”
Roxana Oltean. “Cold War Men and Espionage Narratives of Operation Stopwatch/Gold”
Concluding remarks, ideas for further development of project topic.
Publications
Articles
Manea, Dragos and Mihaela Precup. “Infantilizing the Refugee: On the Mobilization of Empathy in Kate Evans’s Threads from the Refugee Crisis” to be published in a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (Print ISSN: 0898-9575 Online ISSN: 2151-7290), co-edited by Nima Naghibi, Candida Rifkind, and Eleanor Ty on the topic “Migration, Exile, and Diaspora in Graphic Life Narratives” (to be published in spring 2020; indexation)
Mihăilescu, Dana. “Struggles between Nationalism and Ethnicity in Eastern Europe and the United States, 1890s-1910s: The Life Writings of M.E. Ravage and Michael Gold.” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Număr special “Jewish Minorities between Nationalism and Emigration in Central and Eastern Europe (1866-1918),” guest editors Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe and Francesco di Palma, estimated publication date: 2021 [indexation: http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/about.php]
Book Chapters
Manea, Dragos. “‘Life was a precarious dance’: Graphic Narration and the Construction of a Transcultural Memory Space in the Positive Negatives Project.” In Sierp, Aline and Jenny Wustenberg. Agency in Transnational Memory Politics: A Framework for Analyzing Practice, (Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, July 2020; 20 pages, ISBN 978-1-78920-694-4).
Mihailescu, Dana. “The Thrusts of Ghost-Writing Eastern European Survivors’ Memories of the Holocaust in Post-Cold War Western Societies.” After Memory. Rethinking Representations of World War II in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures. Eds. Matthias Schwartz, Nina Weller, and Heike Winkel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (“Media and Cultural Memory” series), estimated publication date: 2021, 29 pages, ISBN: TBD.
Oltean, Roxana. “`We’re Supposed To Have A Special Relationship.` Cold War Men and Espionage Narratives of Operation Stopwatch/Gold in Ian McEwan’s The Innocent” sent for publication in the volume War, Espionage, and Masculinity in British Fiction, Vernon Press.
Precup, Mihaela. “The Autobiographical Mode in Post-Communist Romanian Comics: Everyday Life in Brynjar Åbel Bandlien’s Strîmb Living and Andreea Chirică’s The Year of the Pioneer” in Kuhlman, Martha and Jose Alaniz (eds.). Comics of the New Europe. Leuven: University of Leuven Press (ISBN: 9789462702127).
Final report available here.