en5/2 | Activities / Symposia
'Tradition in Viennese Modernism' Symposium
In co-operation with the Department of European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies of the University of Vienna and the Wienbibliothek (Vienna City Library), the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography hosted a symposium titled "Tradition in Viennese Modernism".
'Hungary 1919 - The Allure of Communism' Symposium
In co-operation with the Institute for Hungarian Historical Research (Balassi Institut - Collegium Hungaricum Wien) and the University of Vienna - European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies (Department of Finno-Ugristic), the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography hosted a symposium titled "Hungary 1919: The Allure of Communism". Read More
Conference 'Beyond the Subject - New Developments in Life Writing'
From 31st October to 3rd November 2013 the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna hosted the third IABA Europe conference titled ‘Beyond the Subject – New Developments in Life Writing’. Experts in auto/biography from 25 countries took part in the conference. Around 90 papers were given on the latest trends and developments in the field of Life Writing and in the digital humanities in particular. Read More
'Biography and Religion' Symposium
On 10 November 2009, an international symposium on 'Biography and Religion', on the significance of life narratives of religious founding figures, took place in the Oratory of the Austrian National Library. The focus was on biographical constructions of religious life narratives and their influence on individual life choices. Read more
'The Many Lives of Biography' Symposium
The international symposium 'The Many Lives of Biography - Biography as Paradigm of Cultural Studies' was held in the Oratory of the Austrian National Library on 25-27 March 2009, as well as at the University of Vienna and the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK). Speakers at the interdisciplinary conference discussed various aspects of the genre and the position of biography in contemporary debates. Read more
'Inside Stories' Film Symposium
Part of the continuing appeal of biography, whether written or on screen, is that it can offer the illusion of a cohesive, unified life story - or that it can shatter this illusion by frustrating conventional chronological and causal expectations. Enlightenment notions of the autonomous, sovereign subject and the division of human activity into interior and exterior, private and public spheres are a necessary part of biographical representations. Applied to the aesthetics of filmmaking, this has many implications. Read more
The symposium focused on the processes of manipulation, stylization and (un)masking used to construct life stories, looking also at the suppression and destruction of biography. What kinds of contradictions and gaps are created by biographical constructions, and what rhetorical and aesthetic strategies are involved? What political and ideological assumptions lie behind biographies? Read more