An interdisciplinary symposium to celebrate the work of Professor Colin Davis.

The School of Humanities at Royal Holloway, University of London, is hosting a symposium to celebrate the work of Colin Davis. who recently retired from his position as Professor of French and Comparative Literature in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Royal Holloway. His significant, original, wide-ranging and internationally-recognised thought covers literature, especially the modern French novel, film and philosophy, with special interest in ethics, hermeneutics, cultural memory, trauma studies and Holocaust literature. We celebrate, too, the award to Colin of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

This event will take place online via Microsoft Teams. Please book your ticket for free here. 

Above: covers of two of Colin Davis' books.

Programme

1300 BST Welcome - Sarah Wright

1310-1410 War and Trauma: Chair – Ruth Cruickshank

1. Max Silverman – ‘“Don't Mention the War”: Trauma and Trace’

2. Eneken Laanes – ‘Entangled Memories of the Holocaust and Stalinist Repressions’

3. Avril Tynan – ‘Traces of Trauma’

4. Helena Duffy – ‘Face to Face with Bobby: The Dog and the Holocaust’

1420- 1520 Film, Poetry, Visual Art: Chair – Matt Phillips

1. Christina Howells – Tarrying with the Negative: ‘J’ai seul la clef de cette parade’

2. Gary D. Mole – ‘“Le dernier Homme entre dans / la chambre à gaz // et je fus brûlé avec toi / Homme dernier”’: Auschwitz, Anguish, and the Impossible Limits of All Possible Poetry’

3. Nikolaj Lubecker – ‘Madame Bovary on the Montagne Sainte-Victoire: Encounters between Cézanne, Renoir, Straub and Huillet’

4. Claire Gorrara – ‘Black Boxes, Exercise Books and Glue: Archiving the Wartime Past in Nora Krug’s Heimat (2018)’

1530-1630 Narrative Ethics: Chair – Hannah Thompson

1. Anna Reading – ‘Storytelling and the Ethical and the Good in Colin Davis' Work’

2. Jakob Lothe – ‘Colin Davis' Contribution to Narrative Ethics’

3. Andreea Ritivoi – ‘Finding (Good) Stories: Colin Davis and Narrative Theory’

4. Hanna Meretoja – ‘The Stories We Tell About Ourselves Are Never Entirely Our Own’

1640-1740 Philosophy and Fiction: Chair – James Williams

1. Emma Wilson – ‘Traces of War: Sarah Kofman, Chantal Akerman’

2. Oliver Davis – ‘Altericide’

3. Akane Kawakami – ‘Truth, Fiction and everything in between: Colin Davis on the novel’

4. Martin Crowley – ‘On Demand’

1745 Colin’s response, thanks and responses

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