CfA: Europaeum Winter School ‘Survivance and Survival’, Estonia 29 Jan- 2 Feb 2024 (22 October)
Open to postgraduates, this Winter School pits the discussion of survival against the notion of survivance, proposed by the Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor. Vizenor stresses the importance of not resorting to defeatist imagery of absence, tragedy, and powerlessness and, instead, seeking for dynamic, inventive, and enduring practices that allows us to envision a future. Survivance brings together the ideas of survival and resistance to encourage agency and creativity in response to the manifold threats we face today. Humanities, especially, can help societies imagine strategies and methods of survivance, through different cultural practices, linguistic strategies and critical vocabularies. Among other things, the workshop will explore different cultural scenarios of survivance and survival: utopias and dystopias, literary futures, contrafactual histories and practices of counter-memory across the ages. If we can imagine possible futures, we can also call them into existence. Under all strands, the workshop seeks to call attention to creative practice as a mode of furthering agency and generating social change.
Hosted by the University of Tartu in Estonia, this winter school is open to postgraduate candidates from any relevant academic background who are studying at a Europaeum member university. The selection committee are especially welcoming to those who wish to present a 10-minute presentation, though this is not necessary, as everyone will be asked to contribute to the discussions. Successful applicants will receives travel costs, accommodation and meals, according to the Europaeum guidelines.