Grievings - September 20-23, 2012, Ustroń, Poland

Grievings - International Conference of the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures University of Silesia in Katowice in partnership with The University of Economics and Humanities in Bielsko-Biała, September 20-23, 2012, Ustroń, Poland Although generally resented and deemed unfavourable for individuals, societies and nations, grief, grievance, and grieving, along with a complex list of epithets that could in various situations, under varying circumstances, accompany them – racial grief, political grievance, protracted grieving, chronic grief, traumatic, unresolved grievance – nevertheless occupy a notorious place in culture and its manifestations in literature, art, history, science, or politics. Confused experiences of melancholia, grief, nostalgia, shame, anguish, hate, longing, and jealousy continue to permeate cultural productions across historical moments, literary epochs, and political sympathies. It is these veneers that we intend to uncover and dismantle, thus – dissolve, or, assuming yet a different approach, assemble into larger entities exhibiting common patterns of formulaic imagining. The name Grievings comes with several emphases in mind – we place great impact on attempts to explore questions of how globalization has affected modes of grieving, how it has altered the subjects/objects over which we grieve, and finally, how grievances have come to adopt the shape of ultimatums, sometimes escalating into forms of sabotage, schizophrenia, or even outright military conflict.