Hurt and Healing: People, Texts, and Material culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, 19th Postgraduate Colloquium of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, June 2, 2018
The 19th Postgraduate Colloquium of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies will focus on the concepts of hurt, trauma and healing between the different disciplines that deal with Eastern Mediterranean. The colloquium aims to explore transformations and multifarious dimensions of the notions of trauma and wreckage, and their opposition, healing, from the Late Antiquity to the Present.
Whilst serving as antitheses to one another they are also complementary. After destruction and breakage, comes the need for repair. However, when a broken textile’s ripped edges are joined again, the visible seam signifies the damage that has happened. Trauma and healing are key concepts in medicine, psychology, and sociology. However, political ideology has constantly used them in order to justify the rising and the existence of authoritarian regimes. In the past, medicine, saints, and magic offered different ways for healing the body and the soul. The current aim of restoration practices is to heal remnants of cultural heritage after damage and to prevent damage with appropriate conservation strategies.
Advance registration is required.