HomeRe-creating Palestine : Trauma, Memory and Resistance in the Contemporary Artistic Production in/on Palestine
*  *  *

Published on Monday, October 20, 2025

Abstract

This international conference aims to explore the central role of culture and art in the reconstruction and regeneration of the social fabric, through a reinterpretation of trauma as a driver of creation and preservation of cultural memory and as a form of resistance to the politics of erasure. We encourage papers dealing with the interconnections between trauma, memory and resistance in multiple artistic languages to highlight the role of art in reinterpreting trauma, making it a source of memory and thus a basis for social change. The focus will be on the artistic production, especially during the 21st century, created by Palestinian artists about Palestine, including those in the diaspora.

Announcement

Argument

Talking about Palestine, especially in the last two years, recalls a continuous process of destruction, violence and erasure. The indigenous Palestinian population – both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank – is exposed daily to various forms of trauma resulting from illegal practices of occupation, forced transfer, deliberate starvation and attacks on civilians. In the last two years, numerous studies have been devoted to the violence perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian population: some of the terms used to describe it are genocide, ecocide, and scholasticide (Giroux, 2025). However, these events are not recent, but must be interpreted in the context of what, since the 1990s, researchers from various fields have defined as “al-Nakba al-mustamirra” (continuing Nakba, Khoury, 2012), i.e. a repeated and planned process of destruction, illegal occupation and annexation carried out by the State of Israel against the Palestinians.

As a result of the numerous traumas they have suffered since 1948, Palestinians are often portrayed as victims par excellence. This type of representation can be exploited by colonial discourse to objectify individuals and deprive them of their agency. In contrast to this discourse, Palestinians in the occupied territories, and in particular those in the Gaza Strip, are the subject of another type of representation – strongly propagated by Israel and also widespread in Europe and the United States – which portrays them as “terrorists” directly involved in and responsible for violence and therefore legitimate targets of the elimination policies conducted by the State of Israel. 

Faced with the polarization of discourse on Palestinians around these two terms – the victim and the terrorist – art, in its many forms and languages, can prove to be a powerful tool for reframing the debate in a more complex perspective, capable of reconnecting individuals with their own history. For Palestinians, both inside and outside Palestine, artistic production can become a real practice of resistance and a strategy for reclaiming history and memory: thus, for example, the artistic practices of displaced Palestinians or those in the diaspora become a means of transmitting history, taking the form of a diasporic object, transportable, but which allows them to maintain a link with their homeland (Mansour, 2017).

Based on these reflections, this international conference aims to explore the central role of culture and art in the reconstruction and regeneration of the social fabric, through a reinterpretation of trauma as a driver of creation and preservation of cultural memory (Erll and Nünning, 2008) and as a form of resistance to the politics of erasure. Art, in its many material and immaterial expressions, leads to a reappropriation of space – geographical and symbolic – and time, through a process of “reorganization” of an unspeakable present (Crone and Mollerup, 2024), constantly disrupted by trauma, but which, through its representation, can be “recreated” and pave the way for a different future. 

We encourage papers dealing with the interconnections between trauma, memory and resistance in multiple artistic languages – literature, cinema, theatre, painting, photography, visual arts, sculpture, to name but a few – to highlight the role of art in reinterpreting trauma, making it a source of memory and thus a basis for social change. The focus will be on the artistic production, especially during the 21st century, created by Palestinian artists about Palestine, including those in the diaspora.

The conference ‘Re-creating Palestine’ is part of a series of international conferences dedicated to the response that contemporary artistic practice offers to the multiple traumas affecting contemporary Arab societies. The first conference on Trauma et création artistique. Artistes arabes et dynamiques de résilience took place at the Université de Lorraine - Nancy in April 2025. The third conference will be held at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon III. 

Considering the link between trauma, memory and resistance in artistic practices, some areas of research could be as follows:

  • Art as an archive of the present: forms of lifewriting (testimonies, autobiographies, biographies, diaries) expressed through literature and other artistic languages to rewrite history and preserve cultural memory; alternative forms of dematerialized and itinerant museum experiences, digital archives.
  • Art and resistance: art as a strategy of resistance to the logic of violence of the colonial system, to suggest new ways of inhabiting the present; youth artistic practices.
  • “Traumartivism”: art as a means of reinterpreting trauma in terms of political activism; forms of collaboration between artists, collective platforms.

Submission Guidelines 

Please send a max. 200-word abstract (Times New Roman, Font size 12, double-spaced) including your name, email address, institutional affiliation and other contact details to Martina Censi (martina.censi@unibg.it), Laurence Denooz (laurence.denooz@univ-lorraine.fr), and Elisabeth Vauthier (elisabeth.vauthier@univ-lyon3.fr). 

Papers in Arabic, English, French, and Italian are accepted.

Deadline for submission of abstract: 15 January 2026

Decision about acceptance:  15 February 2026

Conference organizers

  • Martina Censi (Università degli Studi di Bergamo – Italy; Cren)
  • Laurence Denooz (Université de Lorraine – Nancy, France; Crem)
  • Giuseppe Previtali (Università degli Studi di Bergamo – Italy ; Cren)
  • Arianna Tondi (Università degli Studi di Bergamo – Italy; Cren; IETT Université Jean Moulin Lyon III)
  • Elisabeth Vauthier (Université Jean Moulin Lyon III - CEFREPA, France)

Scientific committee

  • Rana Anani (Institute for Palestine Studies)
  • Isabelle Bernard (The University of Jordan)
  • Martina Censi (Università degli Studi di Bergamo)
  • Laurence Denooz (Université de Lorraine-Nancy)
  • Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (American University of Beirut)
  • Najla Nakhlé-Cerruti (Ifpo/CNRS)
  • Aldo Nicosia (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)
  • Maria Elena Paniconi (Università di Macerata)
  • Nadia Yaqub (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  • Elisabeth Vauthier (Université Jean Moulin Lyon III, France)

Suggested Readings

Albeik, S. (2025). Biography of Palestinian Cinema: Limitations of Spaces and Characters. Muʾassasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya. (in Arabic)

Brehony, L. (2023). Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance. AUC Press.

Charif, M. (2022). The Concept of Liberation in Palestinian Critical Culture (1948-1994). Muʾassasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya. (in Arabic)

Crone, C. & Mollerup, N. G. (2024). From Uncanny to Sensible Pasts: Temporal Reorderings in Syrian Documentaries. History and Anthropology, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2024.2346888

Erll, A. &  Nünning, A. (eds) (2008). Cultural Memory Studies. Walter de Gruyter.

Giroux, H. A. (2025). Scholasticide: Waging War on Education from Gaza to the West. Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 24(1), 1-16.

Jayyusi, L. “Iterability, Cumulativity and Presence: The Relational Figures of Palestinian Memory”, Sa’di, Ahmad H., & Abu-Lughod, Lila (eds.), Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 107–37.

Y. Khajehi (ed.) (2024). Performance et politiques au Moyen-Orient au XXIe siècle : créations, documents et témoignages, Percées, 11, printemps.

Khoury, E. (2012). al-Nakba al-mustamirra (Ongoing Nakba). Majallat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya (MDF), 89, Winter, 37-50. (in Arabic)

Makhoul, B. & Hon, G. (2020). Contemporary Palestinian Art: Origins, Nationalism, Identity. Muʾassasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya. (in Arabic)

 Musallam, A. and Abu Shammaleh A.R. (eds). (2024). Gaza Narrates Its Genocide: Stories and Testimonies. Muʾassasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya. (in Arabic)

Milich, S. (2025). Understanding political violence in culture: Critical reflections on trauma theory and contemporary Arabic literature. Kervan, 29, 209-242.

Mansour, C. (Director) (2017). Khuyūṭ al-sard (Stitching Palestine) [Film]. Forward Film Production (Lebanon).

Sayigh, R. (2013). On the Exclusion of the Palestinian Nakba from the “Trauma Genre”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 43 (1), 51–60.

Shammout, B. (2020). The Audiovisual Palestinian Heritage, Origin, Dispersion, and Digital Preservation: Preliminary Studies and Future Prospects. Muʾassasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya. (In Arabic)

al-Zubaydi, Q. (2019). Palestine in the Cinema (2): Memory and Identity. Muʾassasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filasṭīniyya. (In Arabic)

Yaqub, N. (ed.) (2023). Gaza on Screen. Duke University Press.

Places

  • University of Bergamo
    Bergamo, Italian Republic

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Thursday, January 15, 2026

Keywords

  • Palestine, art, trauma, memory, mémoire, résistance resistance

Contact(s)

  • Elisabeth Vauthier
    courriel : elisabeth [dot] vauthier [at] univ-lyon3 [dot] fr

Information source

  • Elisabeth Vauthier
    courriel : elisabeth [dot] vauthier [at] univ-lyon3 [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Re-creating Palestine : Trauma, Memory and Resistance in the Contemporary Artistic Production in/on Palestine », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, October 20, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14zin

Archive this announcement

  • Google Agenda
  • iCal
Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search