Reconsidering Redress for Unacknowledged Historical Injustices

CfP Workshop: Reconsidering Redress for Unacknowledged Historical Injustices

In recent decades, academic studies on historical injustice have progressed simultaneously with apology and reparation policies. These studies were inspired by the social and political struggles demanding redress of colonial injustices. Accordingly, the growing field of historical injustice studies worked within a conceptual framework for most of the cases shaped by reparation demands for historical wrongdoings. Although historical wrongdoings other than colonial injustices – such as internment or incarceration during civil war periods of the Post-Soviet States during the 1990s – have been included for theoretical study, the field still requires an expansion towards so far unacknowledged and unredressed historical wrongdoings which still and unendingly cause new injustices. 

         The extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I which was recently recognized as genocide by the United States Government in 2021, is a good example of historical wrongdoings which have not yet been recognized by the perpetrator. Along with the Armenian Genocide, there are also other cases, such as massacres of Sinti and Roma during World War II, or the Herero and Nama genocide during the German colonial era which have not been fully recognized its victims and descendants are still demanding reparations.

         This workshop aims to address the need to discuss such cases of historical wrongdoings which are not recognized officially and thus not yet in the reparation process. It also intends to bring together scholars in this field to examine the validity of existing theories on justice and reparation for yet unrecognized historical cases. We seek to build upon the current expertise in the field to develop nuanced ways of rethinking the concept of historical injustice and to expand the scope of core questions of the field in relation to such cases. Possible questions include but are not limited to:

•What is the current state of historical injustice as a field of study?

•To what extent can the injustices that are not acknowledged yet and that still continue today lead to a change in the definition of historical (in)justice?

•What is the moral responsibility of social groups/individuals against ignorance/denial of historical wrongdoings?

•How might collective memory and remembering serve the field of historical injustice to alter perpetrators' official denialist policies?

We would be grateful if you could send an abstract (max. 500 words) until July 1, 2022. Papers for presentation at the conference will be selected and authors will be notified by July 8, 2022. Please send your abstract to: [email protected]

Travel and accommodation expenses will be reimbursed by the workshop organization. Please consider that the maximum reimbursement for total travel expenses is €400.