Organized by The Graduate Students Association in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies
Date: May 23 and May 24, 2022
Time: 9:00 AM-3:30 PM (PST)
Location: Royce Hall 306 and 314
Tensions between permanence and decay are constitutive features of European culture. Periods during which cultural and political conventions appeared as though they would endure have alternated with periods of crisis and widespread instability. There can be many interpretations of permanence and decay: they can refer to the physical nature of artifacts or materials and their durability, but also to the cyclical nature of thought (as the ideological crises in present-day Europe have brought to the fore), as well as to the unstable nature of social, interpersonal, and political frameworks (as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic shows us). The conference asks how changing (or unshakeable) beliefs on sexuality, gender, birth, death, memory, and truth have influenced each other and shaped European culture, literature, and politics.
