Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative through Color

Our international conference is a preliminary step towards a more global research project, which is carried out in close collaboration with Sarah Marusek, my collaborator at the University of Hawai’i Hilo (USA).

Should you still wish to participate to this international conference, please send your abstract by 17 January 2018 at the latest to Anne Wagner (valwagnerfryahoo.com)

Should you wish to attend, you can register online at:
http://crdp.univ-lille2.fr/fileadmin/formulaires/formulaire-fim/index.php

Provisional Program

7 February

8.30 Registration
9.00 Opening speech

9.30-10.00: Massimo LEONE – Professor, University of Turin, Italy.
Colour and State of Art in Flags.
› Question time

10.10-10.40: Claudius MESSNER, Professore Associato, Università del Salento, Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, Italy.
Depicting the colour of the wind. Notes on symbols and fetishes that represent our heritage and hope.
› Question time

10.50-11.20: Frances GUERIN, Kent Law University, UK.
The Politics and History of Grey: Jasper Johns’s American Flags.
› Question time

11.30-12.00: Miklos KONCZOL, Associate Professor, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Department of Legal Philosophy, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Legal Studies, Hungary.
Flags in Hungary : A Natural History.
› Question time
LUNCH

14.00-14.30: Johnny ALAM, Artist and Researcher, Montreal, Canada.
National Flags, Transnational Identity, and the Past/Future of the Nation-State.
› Question time

14.40-15.10: Rini HURKMAN, KLU, Belgium.
The flag of compassion
› Question time
TEA BREAK

15.30-17.30: Roundtables with all the participants. The Flag of compassion

8 February

9.00-9.30: Terry ROYCE, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
What’s in a flag ? A Visual Rhetorical Analysis of Islamic State’s Use of the Shahada.
› Question time

9.40-10.10: James MACLEAN, Associate Professor, University of Southampton, UK.
Scotland and the Saltire : Symbol of a nation carved in the clouds.
› Question time
TEA BREAK

10.30-11.00: Angela CONDELLO, Associate Professor, Roma III University, Italy.
Being different, feeling similar. Some remarks on colors and politics.
› Question time

11.10-11.40: Pierre-André LECOCQ, Professeur émérite, CRDP – Lille 2, France.
Le drapeau dans l’histoire constitutionnelle française.
› Question time
LUNCH

14.00-14.30: Farida FOZDAR, University of Western Australia, Australia.
Flagging Nationalism
› Question time

14.40-15.10: Otun RASHEED and Ismaila Rasheed ADEDOYINA – PostDoctoral Researchers, University of Lagos -Nigeria & University of Louisville - USA.
Semiotic Notions of Development and the National Flag: A Case Study of “Our National Flag”.
› Question time

TEA BREAK
Roundtable – 15.30 – 17.30: Anne WAGNER, Associate Professor, CRDP Lille 2, France.
Roundtables with all participants: Transmission of Values : Power, Transgression and/or Resistance.

9 February
9.00-9.30: Laura ERVO, Professor, The Örebro University, Sweden.
Between Sweden and Russia – the history of the Finnish Blue Cross Flag from the legal and political perspective.
› Question time

9.40-10.10: Kristian BANKOV, Professor, New Bulgarian University, Bulgary.
Flags, Identity, Memory: from nationalisms to the post-truth uses of collective symbols.
› Question time

TEA BREAK

10.30-11.00: Aleksandra MATULEWSKA, Professor, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland.
Historically conditioned identity protection in Poland.
› Question time
11.10-11.40: José Manuel AROSO LINHARES, Professor, Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal.
Flag Regimes, Nationality Types and Law’s « Place »: The exemplum of the actual Portuguese Flag.
› Question time
LUNCH
14.00-14.30: Pascale RIHOUET, Senior Lecturer, Rhode Island School of Design, USA.
Flags and their Public Life in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Law, Art and Ritual).
› Question time

14.40-15.10: Miroslaw M. SADOWSKI, LL.M student, University of Wroclaw, Poland.
Flags – The Agents of the Past in the 21st Century: Law, Identity, Collective Memory.
› Question time

TEA BREAK

16.00-16.30: Helen PRINGLE, Associate Professor, University of New South Wales, Sydney – Australia. Under the Black Flag: Piracy in the Construction of Nations.
› Question time

Our research project:
Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative through Color
Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek (eds)

In our project, the identification of “identity” employs culturally specific color codes and images that conceal assumptions about members of a people comprising a nation, or a people within a nation. Flags narrate constructions of belonging that become tethered to negotiations for power and resistance over time and throughout a people’s history. Bennet (2005) defines identity as “the imagined sameness of a person or social group at all times and in all circumstances”. While such likeness may be imagined or even perpetuated, the idea of sameness may be socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested to reveal competing pasts and presents. Visually evocative and ideologically representative, flags are recognized symbols fusing color with meaning that prescribe a story of unity. Yet, through semiotic confrontation, there may be different paths leading to different truths and applications of significance.
Knowing this and their function, we should investigate these transmitted values over time and space. Indeed, flags may have evolved in key historical periods, but contemporaneaously transpire in a variety of ways.

We should therefore investigate these transmitted values:
- Which values are being transmitted?
- Have their colors evolved through space and time? Is there a shift in cultural and/or collective meaning from one space to another?
- What are their sources?
- What is the relationship between law and flags in their visual representations?
- What is the shared collective and/or cultural memory beyond this visual representation? Considering the complexity and diversity in the building of a common memory with flags, we would suggest our contributors interrogate the complex color- coded sign system of particular flags and their meanings attentive to a complex configuration of historical, social and cultural conditions that shift over time.

For the reference book:
Abstracts should be submitted by April 1, 2018 to Anne Wagner (valwagnerfryahoo.com) and Sarah Marusek (marusekhawaii.edu). Acceptance will be sent by May 31, 2018 with other instructions.
Chapters: 30 to 35 chapters are proposed
Publisher: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Year of Publication: 2019
Series: Law, Language and Communication (https://www.routledge.com/Law-Language- and-Communication/book-series/LAWLANGCOMM)