Paulo de Medeiros
University of Warwick
War and World-Literature
War is one of the key topics constitutive of World-Literature. However, this is usually disregarded and excluded from all major definitions of World Literature from Goethe’s notion on Weltliteratur to the present. Drawing on the theoretical propositions developed by the Warwick Research Collective in Combined and Unequal Development: Towards a New Theory of World Literature (Liverpool University Press, 2015), we will explore the determining importance of war for a different understanding of World-Literature in the present, not only as the literature of the capitalist system as advanced by the WReC, but, consequently, as a key structural element given the basic conflictual nature of the capitalist system itself.
In the first hour a current essay in progress, setting up the field for an understanding of war in World Literature debates, will be presented: ‘‘World-Literature Now: Three Challenges’. There will be 15 minutes dedicated to questions about the essay. In the second hour we will follow with a seminar discussion of the concepts of war and world literature drawing from several texts – to be read ahead of the session – including W. G. Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur (On the Natural History of Destruction), Marguerite Duras’ War (La douleur) and Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail.
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Paulo de Medeiros is Professor of Modern and Contemporary World Literature, and Head of the English and Comparative Literary Studies Department at the University of Warwick, UK. He was Associate Professor at Bryant College (USA) and Professor at Utrecht University (Netherlands) before moving to Warwick. In 2011-2012 he was Keeley Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford and in 2013 and 2014 President of the American Portuguese Studies Association. Recent publications include several co-edited volumes such as Post-Colonial Theory & Crisis (De Gruyter, 2024) and The Hyper-Contemporary Novel in Portugal (Bloomsbury, 2023) as well as a translation of Philip Lacoue-Labarthe’s essay, Préface à la Disparition (ILCML – Afrontamento, 2023). Current projects include a study on the ‘Challenges of World-Literature’.
Diana Gonçalves
Universidade Católica Portuguesa
War and/against Climate Change
Recent years have been marked by a growing concern over climate change, its effects, and possible solution(s). Climate change has been turned into one of the most pressing threats to global security and a common enemy we must fight together.
This masterclass will discuss HBO’s TV show Game of Thrones (based on George R. R. Martin’s saga A Song of Ice and Fire) as an allegory for the threat of climate change and what we fear could be humans’ downfall. First, it will reflect on the idea of a war against climate change and consider the implications of waging war against an elusive enemy. Second, it will explore the different power struggles the war against climate generates and the multiple battlefields in which it is fought. And third, it will think about climate collapse as a traumatic conflict and examine the Anthropocene as a time of confrontation between humans and nature, fuelled by a collective anxiety associated with the imagination and anticipation of future disasters.
Note: Participants are not required to have deep knowledge of the TV show Game of Thrones, although having a general idea about the plot and characters is useful.
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Diana Gonçalves holds a PhD in Culture Studies from Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) and Justus Liebig Universität Giessen (double degree, 2013). She is currently an assistant professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences (UCP), academic director of the Lisbon Consortium, and coordinator of the Master’s program in Culture Studies. She is a researcher at the Centre for Communication and Culture Studies (CECC) and a member of its board of directors. She is also director of the journal Diffractions, and a member of the executive committee of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies (APEAA). Her main areas of research are culture studies, visual culture, American culture and literature, conflict and violence, environment and disasters. She is the author of 9/11: Culture, Catastrophe, and the Critique of Singularity (2016).
Mónica Dias
Universidade Católica Portuguesa
A New Agenda for Peace in a World of War: A turbulent view from a shattered UN
In this Masterclass the topic of the conference “culture of war” will be discussed from the perspective of Geopolitics and International Relations. It is clear that contemporary politics is strongly characterized by new wars (Kaldor, 2014) that affect thousands of civilians and destabilize entire regions. But what is new about these so called “new wars”? What are the consequences of their dynamics? And what can be done to find new pathways to peace?
On the one hand the transformation of conflict meant that the idea of politics was overthrown by a whole economy (and ultimately culture) of war, pushing us back into a tribal or anarchical world. On the other, it suggested a comeback of hard “power politics”, where illiberal and authoritarian states would replace the liberal tradition of institutionalism and multilateralism built on the perceptions of a deeply interconnected and interdependent world. As international organization conceived precisely on these hopes of cooperation and global governance that should guarantee peaceful conflict resolution and a rule-based order, the United Nations are at the center of this clash. The new wars we are witnessing today constitute the UN´s greatest challenge and it must open up to new answers for peace, find urgent ways to reform from within – or will probably perish.
So, our main task will be to look at the role (and the tools) of the United Nations to find new pathways to peace, analyzing concrete conflicts that are haunting different regions in the light of the Charter VI and VII of the UN, the (New) Agenda for Peace (1992/2024), as well as the work of its many Agencies and Funds (Slaughter, 2022). Throughout the class, several examples will be given from the research work of independent institutions such as International Crisis Group, the Institute for the Study of War or the Peace Research Institute of Oslo among others.
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Mónica Dias is Associate Professor and Director of the Instituto de Estudos Políticos of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) where she teaches since 1992.
She leads the Research Line on Peace and Civil Society within the Research Center of the Institute and teaches in the field of Conflict Resolution and Strategies for Peace, Human Rights, Democracy Studies, International Organizations and World Order Theories. Since 2020 she is a member of the board of the Portuguese Political Science Association.
Besides her academic experience, which includes lecturing at the University of Cologne, Germany and the Catholic University in Mozambique in Beira and Nampula, a DAAD and a Fulbright scholarship, as well as a Gulbenkian research scholarship at Princeton University, she translated several books and was a lecturer at international youth seminars on multi-cultural Education, Leadership and Conflict Management organised by the European Commission. From 1996 to 2000, she was advisor in the Committee on Education, Science and Culture at the Portuguese Parliament. Since 2012, she is responsible for the Summit of Democracies at the IEP.