[ecrea] Conference - "Regarding the Pain of Others. What emotions have to do in the History of Humanitarian Images?"

Conference - "Regarding the Pain of Others. What emotions have to do in 
the History of Humanitarian Images?"

A workshop organised by the Institute for Ethics, History, and the 
Humanities (iEH2), and the Geneva Center for Education and Research in 
Humanitarian Action (CERAH), University of Geneva

4-5 July, 2019, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Taking the title of Susan Sontag’s seminal work as a starting point, 
this workshop aims at re-opening an old debate about the potentialities 
of exhibiting other’s suffering in order to promote a culture of peace, 
prevent war and/or resolve conflict. Sontag concluded in her book that 
images of atrocities had led the Global North to a form of exhaustion, 
also called compassion fatigue, which has been criticised more recently 
as a myth. Yet, images remain today the main strategy of humanitarian 
organisations to raise awareness and funds.

In this workshop we would like to propose considering the importance of 
images (not only photographs, but also drawings as well as motion 
pictures) within the long-term history of humanitarianism, in order to 
explore the role of emotions in shaping and mobilising public opinion. 
More particularly, we encourage scholars to think about the ways through 
which humanitarian images affect us as material objects that have 
expressive effects related to the circuits, places or circumstances in 
which they are exhibited. This perspective gives us the possibility to 
read humanitarian images as cultural, social and political practices 
implemented by actors (individual or collective) in a specific 
historical context. By engaging emotions with images, we seek to 
understand what they have done in the history of humanitarian relief, 
rather than merely looking at the meaning of their visual representations.

Therefore, we invite scholars working on the history of humanitarian 
images, who are interested in analysing their performative and material 
entanglements with emotions, to send a 300-word proposal and a short 
biography by December, 14, 2018 to (regardingthepainofothers /at/ gmail.com)

For all speakers who are invited to present papers at the conference, 
the organizing committee will cover the travelling and accommodation costs.

_Organising Committee_
- Valérie Gorin (CERAH, University of Geneva/Graduate Institute)
- Marie Leyder (iEH2/Institute of Gender Studies, University of Geneva)
- Dolores Martín-Moruno (iEH2, University of Geneva)
- Gian Marco Vidor (iEH2, University of Geneva)

_Scientific Committee_
- Roland Bleiker (University of Queensland, Australia)
- Emma Hutchison (University of Queensland, Australia)
- Jo Labanyi (New York University, USA)
- Beatriz Pichel (De Montfort University, Leicester, UK)
- Davide Rodogno (Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland)


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