Suggested list of readings for session 1: Ethics and the role of the researcher in history writing

The theme session on 'Ethics and the researcher in history writing' will be divided in three sessions, in which the questions of ethics will be approached from different perspectives and through different case studies. In addition to the individual papers presented under each theme, the discussion will be based on a selection of literature by the commentator of the session, Prof. Liz Stanley. Each of the articles raises things of relevance to papers in the particular session it is attached to and creates common ground for the general discussion. The articles are available electronically through the websites of each journal.

For further information, please contact the moderator of the session, Kaisa Vehkalahti (kaisa.vehkalahti(at)utu.fi)

Ethical aftermaths: researchers, writing & un/ethical pasts

Liz Stanley & Helen Dampier (2005) "Aftermaths: post/memory, commemoration and the concentration camps of the South African war" European Review of History 12, 1, pp.89-113.

On general issues concerning history writing, and the complex interface between the ethical, political and practical ideas that we struggle with expressing on paper, "Aftermaths" explores the fact that 'the past' does not stop and nor is it sealed away in a time-capsule labelled '1899' (or other dates). Instead, what is called memory and also public commemorative practices are both involved in successive reworkings and rewritings of the past for present-time use, and of course the researcher is part of such processes.

(i) Reading the epistolarium: epistolary practices, epistolary ethics, and epistemological consequences

Friday 12th August, 16.30-18.00

Presentations:

• Erla Hulda Halldorsdottir, University of Iceland: Thoughts on the ethics of letters and the researchers
• Eve Annuk, Estonian Cultural History Archive, Tartu University: Ethics and close history: what is behind scenes of stalinism? A case study.
• Maarit Leskelä-Kärki, University of Turku/Cultural History: Writing a Biography - Facing the Other

Recommended literature: Liz Stanley (2004) "The epistolarium: on theorizing letters and correspondences" Auto/Biography 12, pp.201-35.

Working with letters and correspondences raises some fascinating practical and also epistemological issues. It also points up the complicated ethical dimensions of this kind of historiography: correspondents evolve over time working or practical ethics in the exchanges between them (and of course these change); and also the always partial and 'never arrived' character of the epistolarium raises some immense issues concerning the ethical practices of the researcher. This article sees theorizing the epistolarium as key to getting a conceptual grip such matters.

(ii) Encounters between self and others: ethics and 'knowing the past'

Saturday 13th August, 14.30-16.00

Presentations:

• Jaana Loipponen, University of Newcastle, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology: Translating Encounters with War Widows
• Minna Uitto, Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, Oulu University: Discussion on ethical issues in a narrative teacher group
• Leena Rossi, University of Turku, Cultural history: Power in oral history interviews

Recommended literature: Liz Stanley (2001) "Mimesis, metaphor and representation: holding out an Olive branch to the emergent Schreiner canon" Women's History Review 10, 1, pp.27-50.

By what means and in what ways do we claim to 'know the past'? and how do we understand (and perhaps write about) the encounter that takes place between us and our glimpses of people of the past. Indeed, is it actually possible to know the past, or are we always working from what has been termed a 'presentist' position? The troubles that feminism has discerned with representation and representational claims are central here; "Mimesis, metaphor and representation" argues that it is important to 'have it all' - to problematise representation; also to recognise that representation is necessarily what we work with; also to insist on the materiality of the past; and to attempt to find ways of holding all these in some kind of balance.

(iii) The ethical work of feminism: writing, the past and the researcher

Saturday 13th August, 16.30-18.00

Presentations:

• Pia Maria Ahlbäck, Åbo Akademi, litteraturvetenskap: Readable historians. Reality effect and other tropes of addressivity in historical writing.
• Laura Saarenmaa, University of Tampere, Media Culture: Ethics of Interpreting Texts as Practices

Recommended literature: Liz Stanley (2002) "Mourning becomes... The work of feminism in the space between lives lived and lives written" Women's Studies International Forum 25, 1, pp.1-17.

Writing the past, the practices known as historiography (but stripped of its formerly 'narrating a factual story' status), are key to conceptualising the epistemological, methodological and also ethical of academic feminist practice in researching and attempting to understand the past. "Mourning becomes..." is a phrase completed with "Electra", and it contains within it both empathy for the mourning person, and also ethical revulsion of what mourning led Electra to: vengeance. "Mourning becomes..." explores notions of ethics and justice in feminist scholarship, and does so in a way that rejects any simplistic identification with 'women', and it insists that writing - writing and its artfulness - is crucial to feminism's theorisations of such matters.