All around the world
Juliann Knaus, University of Zurich
The third workshop of the DFG-funded research network “The Cultural Politics of Reconciliation” took place over the course of two days—August 7-8, 2024—at the University of Zurich. As a member of the research network, former CIMIG PhD candidate and research associate Juliann Knaus had the opportunity to attend the workshop entitled “The Properties of Social Justice.” The opening workshop “Cultural Interventions on the Im/Possibilities of Reconciliation” (July 2023, LMU) and the second workshop “Reconciliation Refused: Poetic Interrogations of Imperial Reparations” (January 2024, University of Mannheim) already provided a fruitful theoretical foundation for the scholarly discussions that took place over the two workshop days.
The Zurich workshop consisted of internal member meetings, where the members discussed terminological concepts, legal frameworks, and secondary readings applicable to the two guest lectures and considered “the crucial and ongoing role of law in forming, legitimating, and rationalizing processes of settler colonialism and intersectional oppression.” Individual members’ project presentations gave insights into research intentions for network-relevant collaborations. Fellow members provided feedback and suggestions. The keynote lectures presented arguments on the intersections between the topics of property, land, race, settler colonialism, and law and were presented by Brenna Bhandar (University of British Columbia) and Patricia Williams (Northeastern University).
Juliann is looking forward to continuing thought-provoking conversations surrounding topics of reconciliation in the next three workshops that will take place in Münster, Dresden, and Bonn. For information and updates on the network, network members, workshops, and future projects/publications please see the network website.
Juliann Knaus, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu Campus
Juliann Knaus, former PhD candidate at CIMIG, had the opportunity to attend the 13th biennial MESEA (The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas) conference at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu Campus. The conference theme “Moving Cultures, Moving Ethnicities” brought together over 100 speakers from over 25 countries creating a conference atmosphere abundant with diverse intellectual exchange.
She represented CIMIG by presenting a paper entitled “Curating a Historiography of Prejudices: Explorations of Migration, Citizenship, and Ethnicity in J. Michael Martinez’s Museum of the Americas (2018),” in which she assessed the interplay between word and image throughout this book of poetry. She argued that Martinez interacts with personal photographs, casta paintings, lynching postcards, and archival photos as well as reframes government forms and source texts in order to unpack the fluidity of ethnic identity, pretenses and effects of geographical migration, and cultural mobility, while also exposing the violence and constraints placed on bodies deemed as ‘other’ from the past to the present day.
Through participation at this conference, Juliann Knaus has contributed to building international networks for CIMIG and for herself, which enables her to further her intermedial research projects as it pertains to poetic forms, borderlands theories, and concepts of race and ethnicity.