WS: Heroes & Martyrs: Contested Figures between Agency and Victimhood (GCSC)

Research Area 1 (Memory in the Study of Culture) at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) in Giessen is organizing a one-day open workshop to explore the concepts and phenomena of heroes and martyrs in culture. Participants are invited to submit proposals for readings to discuss during our meeting. Further, participants, who include these concepts within their current research projects, are very encouraged to share their ideas through working papers, presentations, etc. We seek contributions from the whole range of academic disciplines and fields that deal with the questions of heroism, martyrdom and victimhood - from Classics through theology/religious studies, history, sociology and cultural studies, to memory studies and genocide studies. Moreover, we seek to explore these phenomena across the globe, with transcultural approaches that show respect of local difference and locatedness, while enabling transnational comparison and another across historical periods. 

As a starting point, we will investigate the work that argued about the marginalization of the figures of the heroes and the martyrs in modern societies. On one hand, Bernhard Giesen (2004) noted that the individual faces of the heroes are "replaced by impersonal values; the personal calling of past heroism recedes from the obligation to respect the timeless values of a universal community" (42). On the other hand, the martyrs and the power of their sacrifices are currently framed as passive victims who need to be defended and protected by the modern civil society. Accordingly, with the transnational turn in the humanities, the heroes and martyrs who have traditionally been seen as the foundation of national identity framewokrs, have been delegitimised. As historian Martin Sabrow has suggested: "It is no longer the hero but the victim that is at the centre of our historical culture" (2008). And in particular it is the Leidensopfer, or traumatic victim, rather than the tragic Heldenopfer, the heroic victim, that has taken centre stage. 

In light of this backdrop, we will discuss the validity of such premises through covering a range of questions including: 

How do the concepts of hero, martyr and victim intersect today? 

Can a universal post-heroic age be declared? 

Where are these sites and cultures where heroism and martyrdom retain prevalence in cultures of memory, identity and public representation? 

What can studies of the intersections of the concepts in different periods and spaces reveal about their value today? 

• Relations to nationalism? Postcolonial? Gender? 
• In what ways is heroism currently concealed or articulated in the ongoing construction national narratives? And how do heroism and martyrdom function in transnational and localised constructions of past,present and future? How can multiple models of ethos or ideas still be derived from the material presence of a hero or a martyr without/beyond any institutional mediation? 

***Please send your presentation abstract (250-400 words) or your suggestion for reading(s) by Friday, the 7th of April 2017 to mina.ibrahim@gcsc.uni-giessen.de 

***The workshop will be held on Friday, the 23rd of June 2017 between 10:00-16:00. Further details about the setting will be sent.