Programme

lundi 14 mars – 14h

"De l’Algérie à l’Égypte : formes de l’exil et de la mémoire"

Michèle BAUSSANT (CNRS-LESC)

The University of Chicago Center, 6 rue Thomas Mann, 75013 Paris

À travers cet exposé, il s’agit de présenter une recherche en cours sur les formes de la mémoire et de l’exil chez les populations étrangères d’Égypte et leurs descendants, et notamment sur celles qui s’identifient ou sont catégorisées comme mutamasirun et/musta’arabun, et qui ont plus ou moins disparues d’Égypte, à partir de 1948 puis de la crise du Canal de Suez en 1956. Cette recherche se place dans la continuité des travaux que j’ai menés précédemment sur des populations très hétérogènes – telles que les Pieds-noirs – qui ont connu plusieurs migrations sur un temps relativement court et ont été rassemblées en un groupe reconnu comme tel institutionnellement dans le dernier pays où elles étaient installées. Comment à partir de cette hétérogénéité se construit du « commun » qui perdure et se transforme une fois que les cadres sociaux dans lequel ce « commun » a émergé ont disparu ?

Mardi 15 mars – 14h

"Meanings and Uses of Home in Paris and Berlin, 1910-1950: Consolidating and Dividing Nations, Groups, Classes, Selves"

Leora AUSLANDER (The University of Chicago)

Maison René-Ginouvès, 21, allée de l’Université, 92023 Nanterre Cedex (Salle du Conseil, 4e étage)

This session will approach the triad of material culture, memory, and migration through a presentation of my ongoing research on the intersection of national, class, and “minority” cultures in France and Germany from 1910 to 1950. More specifically, I will speak to the methodological and conceptual possibilities and challenges of using the traces of the home, including inventories, photographs, memoirs, letters, and de-contextualized objects, to better understand the construction of the nation and subnational affiliation. The specific “minority” group studied is Jews. Particular attention will be given to the gendered nature of home-making and remembering, the responses of established Jewish communities to immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe in the interwar period, and postwar dynamics of commemoration, restitution , and reconstruction.

Jeudi 17 mars – 14h

"Celtic Identities: Memory, Material Culture, and Migrations"

Michael DIETLER (The University of Chicago)

Maison René-Ginouvès, 21, allée de l’Université, 92023 Nanterre Cedex (Salle du Conseil, 4e étage)

This seminar session approaches the intersection of memory, material culture, and migration through the lens of the protean concept of “Celts” – a highly appropriate subject for St. Patrick’s Day. Rather than formally communicating the results of a finished product, this seminar is designed to engage students in working through the process of a research project still in progress (showing design, methods, materials, paths, structure, etc.). The project in question is one that I have been working on intermittently for more than a decade and that is now in the process of being turned into a book. It concerns the use of the ancient past in the construction of various forms of “Celtic” identity in the modern world. For purposes of analysis, I have found it useful to delineate three main forms of Celtic imaginary that I call Celticism, Celtitude, and Celticity. Celticism consists of self-conscious attempts to construct ethnicized forms of collective memory and communal identity that are territorially bounded and embedded in overt polilical projects and ideologies. These include ethnic nationalisms (for example, in France and Ireland), regional resistance to nationalist or colonialist projects (for example, Breton, Scottish, Irish, and Galician movements), and the construction of a new transnational imagined community (the EU). Celtitude is a product of migration, and it consists of forms of transnational Celtic identity lodged in the construction of fields of “ethno-nostalgic” memory among, for example, descendants of the Irish and Scottish diasporas around the world. Celticity is a phenomenon centered around a global spiritual connection to the idea of Celtic identity. Although employing many of the same symbols and topoi, versions of Celticity depart in important ways from forms of Celticism and Celtitude in that the concept is largely decoupled from essentializing notions of race, “blood”, genealogy, or even language – that is, from most of the main traditional tropes of ethnicity.