Next year theme for the Jackman Humanities Institute Faculty Research Fellowships is:
Indelible Violence: Shame, Reconciliation and the Work of Apology
Performances of reconciliation and apology attempt to erase violence that is arguably indelible. What ideological and therapeutic work does reconciliation do, under whose authority, for whose benefit, and with what limits? What would it mean to acknowledge the role of shame? How might the work of truth and reconciliation commissions be compared to other ways of shifting relations from violence and violation to co-existence? How does the work of apology stabilize social identities, conditions, and relations and how do indelible traces of violence work for and against those conditions, identities and relations?
Prof Mark Meyerson has won a Twelve-Month Fellowship for the following fascinating project:
The Shame of Reconciliation: The Spanish Inquisition as a Truth Commission
This project focuses on the Spanish Inquisition as an institution of transitional justice, exploring how it worked to assimilate forcibly baptized Jews (Conversos) and Muslims (Moriscos) into Spanish Catholic society through ‘reconciling’ them with the Church in a judicial process which involved publicly disciplining and shaming them and which often had the unintended effect of impeding their assimilation. The examination of the Inquisition’s activities and their social ramifications will be integral to a comparative study of ethnic violence in premodern and modern societies and the efforts of societies to recover from such violence.