Project Description
The dynamics of memory and remembrance of the Holocaust have passed through different phases. Some aspects have been transmitted, while others have been systematically overlooked, misrepresented, or silenced on national, transnational and international levels.
The Violence of Silence is a two-day conference exploring the conscious and unconscious mechanisms through which silence functions as a transnational tool of exclusion, distortion, and, ultimately, continued violence. It sheds light on the silenced or marginalised dimensions of Holocaust history and memory, and examines literary works that instead, deepen and extend official narratives by offering non-canonical images for cultivating new forms of memory, justice, and solidarity today. The conference brings together keynote speaker Professor Sue Vice (University of Sheffield) and thirty scholars representing a wide range of career stages, genders, and national backgrounds, including Ireland, Canada, the UK, the US, Greece, France, Germany, Poland, and India.
The conference will take place at University College Dublin, 23-24 January 2026, and includes a performance of semi-staged scenes from Such Creatures written by award-winning Canadian playwright, Judith Thompson. This performance-focused event supplements and extends academic discussion by allowing participants to experience the literature under analysis, brought to life on stage by UCD students. It therefore crafts innovative and transdisciplinary intersections of performance with history to consider the role of literature in encouraging writers, readers, and the public to break historical cycles of forgetting.
- Call for Papers | CLOSED
Organisers
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Mara Josi is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor at University College Dublin. Since completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, she has specialised in Italian 20th and 21st-century literature and culture. Mara’s work reflects her interest in innovative research methodologies and cultural approaches to the study of literature and it is rooted in memory studies, with a particular emphasis on commemorative landscapes—both physical and medial—, women’s literature and history, and Holocaust culture, including Jewish literary texts from the Nazi occupation of Italy. Her first monograph, Rome, 16 October 1943. History, Memory, Literature, was awarded the Premio Internazionale Ennio Flaiano di Italianistica in 2024. Before joining UCD, she was an IRC and FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin and Ghent University, respectively, and a lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Lindsay Thistle is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She earned her PhD in Theatre & Performance Studies from York University, and her research examines cultural representations of war in Canada. Lindsay has taught Canadian Studies internationally and serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Studies Network. Her current project, Staging World War II and the Holocaust, 1945–1975, was awarded a Craig Dobbin Legacy Scholarship through the Ireland Canada University Foundation, the UCD Centre for Canadian Studies, and the UCD College of Arts and Humanities. Lindsay is also a theatre artist whose work centres on creating performance-based projects that engage academic research through artistic practice.