Thinking the Twentieth Century

The twentieth century emerged as a problem in different fields of the social sciences and humanities, even before the end of 2000. The coincidence between the end of the century and of some of its most emblematic political phenomena, seemed to reinforce the need for examination and new narratives. The twenty-first century itself is often thought and represented in relation to the many versions in which the previous century is seen as ‘the last catastrophe’ (Henry Rousso), a temporal marker of contemporary history. Over the two last decades, historiography, philosophy, political science, the arts, have insistently reflected on the present from the multiple narratives produced throughout the twentieth-century, or using the twentieth-century as its referent. More than a specific historical period, last century is thus constituted as a concept, or imaginary, one that defines forms of political thought and social and artistic representations.

The symposium Thinking the Twentieth Century. Perspectives from the twenty-first century aims to intervene in current debates on the history, memory and heritage of the twentieth-century, contributing to diversifying and complexifying its narratives and representations. It, therefore, invites contributions from multiple fields of research on the twentieth century, including history and memory, art history, cultural studies, literature, philosophy, media studies, pedagogy, digital humanities, economy, social sciences, climate and the environment, sciences and technology, urban studies and mobilities.

_{^{Photo ©Augusto Cabrita, Belarmino (1964)}}