REIMAGINING THE OTHER: NARRATIVE EMPATHY AND ITS LIMITATIONS

Fårö, Sweden, 29 July–5 August 2018

Sunday 29 July: Arrival and Registration

18:30-20:00 Dinner

20:00 Welcome event

Monday 30 July

7:30-9:00 Breakfast (and Children’s Circle intro)

(8:00-8:45 Morning Exercise Session)

9:00-12:00 Session 1: Theorising Empathy and Otherness

Welcome and introductions (Eneken Laanes and Hanna Meretoja)

Hanna Meretoja: Non-Subsumptive Memory and Narrative Empathy

Silvia Pierosara: Empathy vs. Compassion? Towards an Ethics of Reflecting Vulnerability

Colin Davis: Encountering the Other (Without Empathy)

12:00-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:30 Session 2: Philosophy and Empathy

Matt Phillips: Empathy in Curves and Spirals: Roland Barthes, Bertolt Brecht, and S/Z

Katie Bellamy Mitchell: Navigating Identity Fragility: Dislocated Identification

Anahit Poturyan: Virtual Reality and Philosophical Approaches to Empathy

15:30-16:00 Coffee

16:00-17:30 Keynote: 

Molly Andrews: Activist Lives Over Time

18:30-20:00 Welcome Dinner

(20:00 Cultural Program)

Tuesday 31 July

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

(8:00-8:45 Morning Exercise Session)

9:00-12:00 Session 3: Testimonies, Biographies and Narrative Empathy

Maarit Leskelä-Kärki: Biography and Empathy

Jung Eun Seo: My Pain Residing in Other’s Body: Testimony, Narrative Empathy, and the Construction of Social Suffering

Unni Langås: Encounters with the Other: Narrative Empathy in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Helena Duffy: Can a Nazi be a ‘Postmodern Nihilist’? Narrative Empathy in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes Revisited

12:00-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:30 A chance to visit other circles

15:30-16:00 Coffee

16:00-17:30 Keynote:

Jason de León: The Land of Open Graves: Necroviolence and the Politics of Migrant Death in the Arizona Desert

18:30-20:00 Dinner

(20:00 Cultural Program)

Wednesday 1 August

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

(8:00-8:45 Morning Exercise Session)

9:00-12:00 Session 4: The Ethics and Politics of Empathy

Andreea Ritivoi: Power and Pity: The Historical and Political Roots of the Narrative of Refugee Assistance

Aura Lounasmaa: Creating the Other through Victim Narratives in Women’s Advocacy

Laura Mishelle Muñoz González: Aesthetics and Memory Narratives: Reflexivity as Researcher in Mexico

Anna Lindhé: Narrative Empathy and the Creation of the Other: Towards a New Ethics of Reading Literature

12:00-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:30 Session 5: Engaging with the Other in Film Narratives

Kimi Kärki: Imagine the Talking Machines: Emotional ‘other’ in AI Voices of Visionary Science Fiction Films

Marta Cenedese: The Failures of Film: Reimagining Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française

Niina Oisalo: When the Others Strike Back: Palimpsestic Memory and Tricksters in Documentary Storytelling in El escarabajo de oro, or Victorias Hämnd

15:30-16:00 Coffee

16:00-17:30 Keynote:

Molly Andrews: The Narrative Architecture of Political Forgiveness

18:30-20:00 Dinner

(20:00 Cultural Program)

Thursday 2 August: The Excursion Day

Friday 3 August

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

(8:00-8:45 Morning Exercise Session)

9:00-12:00 Session 6: Empathy and the Novel

Fahimeh Qasemnezhad: Empathic Unsettlement and the Secondary Witness in Pat Barker’s Another World

Suvi Lahtonen: Romance as an Aesthetic Mode in Finnish War Fiction: Self-Empathy in Historical Fiction in Laila Hietamies’ (Hirvisaari) Snows of Oblivion and Jörn Donner’s Angela’s War

Nanny Jolma: Grotesque Features and their Ambiguous Meanings in Bo Carpelan´s novel Benjamins bok

Su (Sophie) Yu-wen: Estranging Emotions: Jane’s Reasoning Forgiveness in Jane Eyre

13:30-15:00 Session 7: Imagining the Other Across Media

Aura Nikkilä and Anna Vuorinne: Visualising Others’ Stories. Creating Empathy through Graphic Storytelling in Hanneriina Moisseinen’s The Isthmus

Per Roar: Performing Time: Remembering the Other, Choreographing Empathy

Eneken Laanes: Empathy in Kristina Norman’s video art

15:30-16:00 Coffee

16:00-17:30 Keynote:

Jason de León: Soldiers and Kinds: Violence, Representation, and Photoethnographic Practice in the Context of Human Smuggling Across Mexico

18:30-20:00 Dinner

(20:00 Cultural Program)

Saturday 4 July

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

(8:00-8:45 Morning Exercise Session)

9:00-12:00 Session 8: Engaging with Vulnerable Others

Rebecca Rosenberg: Imagining the Mentally Ill Other in Emma Santos, Linda Lê, and Chloé Delaume

Kerttu Lehto: Do you still remember the day? Recreating Shared Memories in an Elderly House by using Larp as a Method

Sonjeong Cho: Emphatic Feminism and the Politics of “Beside”

Concluding reflections

12:00-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:30 A chance to visit other circles

15:30-16:00 Coffee

16:00-17:30 Football

18:30-20:00 Gala Dinner

20:00 Party

5 August: Departure