06.02.2023 Language(s) of Violence – 1st Annual Conference Regional Research Center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe)

Foto: picture alliance / NurPhoto | Emmanuele Contini

The first annual conference of TraCe is titled “Language(s) of Violence” and will take place the first to the third of March. It will be dedicated to the multi-layered relationship between language and violence. Please find the detailed program here.

You are cordially invited to exchange ideas at the conference during the keynote speech, on three academic panels, during a roundtable discussion with TraCe’s international Scientific Advisory Board (in English) and one dialogue panel with local practitioners (in German).

Please register until 15.02.2023 via trace-coordination(at)hsfk.de, indicating if you would like to join the academic conference, the Dialogpanel, or both.

Part 1: Academic Conference

When?  March 1 to 2, 2023
Where?  Normative Orders, Max-Horkheimer-Straße 2, 60323 Frankfurt am Main

Stathis Kalyvas (University of Oxford) kicks off the conference with his keynote speech “Political Violence: Grand Patterns and Basic Concepts”. The first panel, “The Scientific Language of Violence”, is devoted to the semantic complexity of the scientific concept of political violence and aims to identify changes in its political, normative, and analytical meanings.
The second panel, “The Public Semantics of Violence”, will explore the relationships between political violence and public speech acts, discussing different dimensions ranging from fake news to framing by social movements to memory culture.
The third panel, “Language as Violence”, focuses on how language itself can act as political violence, taking a look at different areas such as hate speech, propaganda, and justification of violence. The roundtable discussion reflects on and wraps up the scientific part of the conference.

Part 2: Dialogpanel (in German)

The German-language dialogue panel with practitioners Ali Can, Natasha A. Kelly and Nicole Rieber

When? March 3, 10-12am
Where? Foyer, Stadtbücherei Frankfurt, Hasengasse 4, 60311 Frankfurt am Main

Moderated by Christopher Daase and Rebecca Schmidt and in cooperation with the cluster initiative “ConTrust” and Stadtbücherei Frankfurt, its focus lies on the exchange between science and practice. The aim is to shed light on various aspects of the interface between language and violence from a practical perspective. Beyond the scientific sphere, the dialogue panel is aimed in particular at the local public.