A Sort of Wisdom: Exploring the Legacy of Primo Levi

A Sort of Wisdom: Exploring the Legacy of Primo Levi

An international conference commemorating the  25th anniversary of Primo Levi's death
Edge Hill University Friday and Saturday, July 6 and 7, 2012

Confirmed keynote speakers

Norman Geras, Professor Emeritus, University of  Manchester, and author of The Contract of Mutual  Indifference: Political Philosophy After the  Holocaust.

Robert S.C. Gordon, Reader in Modern Italian Culture and Fellow of Gonville and Caius
College, University of Cambridge, and author of Primo Levi's Ordinary Virtues: from testimony to ethics.

Anthony Rudolf, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and author of At an Uncertain Hour: Primo Levi's War against Oblivion.

Paul Salmons, Head of Curriculum and Development at the Holocaust Education Development Project, Institute of Education.

Judith Woolf, Senior Lecturer in English and  Italian at the University of York, author of The
Memory of the Offence.

PRIMO LEVI

Primo Levi (1919-1987) was born and lived his entire life in or near Turin, with the exception
of the years 1944-45, when he was captured as an anti-fascist partisan, deported to Auschwitz, and then released into war-torn Europe. After liberation, with 'a torrent of things to tell the civilised world' and 'the tattooed number on my arm burning like a sore' he wrote a series of remarkable books, including If This is a Man, The Periodic Table, and The Drowned and the Saved. He is now viewed as not only one of the  key literary figures of the twentieth century and one of the most important survivor-writers of the Holocaust, but for many he is an ethical writer of great depth and even a subtle and  humane 'political philosopher'.
 
Although he famously asked his readers not to treat him as a 'prophet, oracle, or seer,' Primo Levi also suspected that there was 'a sort of wisdom that seeps through from my books which I don't feel within myself.' What sort of wisdom do we find in Levi and how can we critically appropriate his legacy without encouraging what Bryan Cheyette has called 'reductive discourses which have engulfed Levi's life and work' and risk turning him into a 'saint-like figure'?

PROPOSALS

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers or for conference panels on any aspect of Levi's legacy and from any discipline ? including Literature,  Cultural Studies, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Educational Studies, Social Theory, History and  Holocaust studies. Topics are not limited to, but may include:
?       Levi and Ethics
?       Levi and Memory / Story-Telling
?       Levi and the Holocaust
?       Levi and the 'Two Cultures'
?       Levi and Work, Levi and Friendship
?       Levi and Writing
?       Levi and Language
?       Levi and Violence and War
?       Levi and Holocaust Education
?       Levi and Philosophy after the Holocaust
?       Levi and Humanism
?       Representations and Receptions

Please send a 500-word abstract (max.) of your paper and a short CV by 1 February, 2012 to Professor Alan Johnson,  [email protected]. The conference will be followed by a call for papers for an edited collection of essays on Levi's work.

Conference website
http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/events/2012/07/06/primo-levi-conference

Conference team
Dr Arthur Chapman, Reader in the Faculty of Education Tel: 01695 657 189, E-mail:
[email protected].
Prof. Alan Johnson, Professor of Democratic Theory and Practice
Tel: 01695 650 976, E-mail: [email protected]
Dr Minna Vuohelainen, Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Tel: 01695 584 363, E-mail:[email protected]

Enquiries: [email protected]

Web address: http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/events/2012/07/06/primo-levi-conference
Sponsored by: Edge Hill University