Memory as a contestatory force, a talk with Dr Lorraine Ryan

About

Dr Lorraine Ryan is an international researcher in the fields of Spanish literature, memory studies, and gender. In her research Dr Ryan examines the relationship between collective memory, power and resistance, exploring the modes through which dominant memory is disrupted or resisted and counter-memories emerge. 

In this talk as part of And what it became is not what it is now, Dr Ryan will present her essay Memory as a contestatory force, in which she proposes that counter-memory is restricted by the primarily national and limited nature of empathy, and also the loss of the subversive when counter-memory is appropriated by dominant memory. Dr Ryan will examine the potential for artistic practice to generate the counter-memory of the counter-memory, with specific reference to transmission and reception.  

Dr Lorraine Ryan is the director of postgraduate research for the department of Modern Languages at Birmingham University. Dr Ryan was previously a visiting fellow to the IMLR (Institute of Modern Languages Research Institute) in the University of London (2014-2015), and the Georg Eckert Institute for School Textbook Research in Leipzig (2015-16). Dr. Ryan was a Birmingham Fellow from 2012-2017. She is currently a researcher in the “Looking South: Spain in the European Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1986”, hosted by the University of Amsterdam and led by Professor Shelley Godsland.