Protest is an intrinsic part of human culture, which enables subjects to express their dissatisfaction with existing social structures and hegemonic hierarchies of power. Protests have occurred across time periods and contexts, and have taken numerous different forms, ranging from personal expressions of discontent to united movements for revolutionary change. Protests can be individual or collective, personal or political, spontaneous or carefully planned, but they are generally orientated towards destabilising the status quo and establishing new modes of existence. Over the ages, political, social and cultural protests have successfully toppled authoritarian regimes, exposed and confronted dominant imbalances of power, and ameliorated conditions for disenfranchised members of society.

Programme

9.30 – 10 Registration

10 – 11 Keynote: (Self-)censorship and the Limitations of Artistic Intervention in Merzak Allouache’s Normal! (2011) (Professor Will Higbee, University of Exeter)

11 – 12.30 Panel One: Political Protest Past and Present

• “La Guerre du blé” en Normandie: Évolutions des pratiques et des formes de la mobilisation collective sous l’Ancien Régime et la Révolution française (Paul Maneuvrier-Hervieu, University of Normandy)
• ‘Vive les Occupations d’Usines!’: Photography at the Factory in the Strike Movements of May 1968 and June 1936 (Benjamin Partridge, Newcastle University)
• Québec, printemps 2012: L’École de la Montagne Rouge, solidairement artistique (Géraldine Lavoie-Dugré, University of Quebec in Montreal)

12.30 – 1.15 Lunch

1.15 – 2.15 Training Session: How to Get Published as a PhD or ECR (Dr Jamal Bahmad, University of Leeds)

2.15 – 3.45 Panel Two: Gender, Sexuality and Dissent

• Mourning as Protest in Assia Djébar’s La Nouba ou les femmes de Mont Chenoua and La Femme sans sépulture (Beatrice Ivey, University of Leeds)
• Stratégies de lutte de l’activisme féministe queer: un art de la contestation (Marie-Emilie Lorenzi, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University)
• Act-Up Paris: la colère pour ne pas mourir (Romain Thomazeau, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University)

3.45 – 4.15 Tea and Coffee Break

4.15 – 5.45 Panel Three: Linguistic and Counter-cultural Protest

• Protesting Post-9/11 Narrative Hegemony (Rebecca Johnson, University of Manchester)
• Subtitling the Banlieue: Translating Linguistic Protest in Banlieue Cinema (Hannah Silvester, University of Glasgow)
• Extension of the Realm of Creative Interventions: The Protestatory Transmediality of Michel Houellebecq (Ashley Scott-Harris, Queen’s University Belfast)

To register for this event, simply email your name and institution to Kaya Davies Hayon (kaya.davieshayon@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk) and Joseph Ford (J.V.Ford@leeds.ac.uk) by Friday 15 April 2016. Registration is free of charge.