1st International Egodocumental Network Conference
Vilnius University, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the University of Lodz, and the Egodocumental Research Group (https://egodocuments.umk.pl) organise an international conference focusing on research, development, and changing perceptions of egodocuments in the twenty-first century. The conference aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to share their insights and to encourage interdisciplinary studies of egodocuments.
The conference will also be the first meeting of the International Egodocumental Network established in December 2023 by the Egodocumental Research Group (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the University of Lodz) to unite scholars from different disciplines working on egodocuments. It provides a platform for discussion, collaboration, and exchange of information between the participants, as well as online research seminars organized twice a year. In this dimension, our conference continues two editions of the Scientific Symposium "Egodocuments, Life-Writing and Autobiographical Texts..." organized at NCU in Toruń in 2022 and 2024.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Nataliia Voloshkova
Kazimierz Wielki University and Oxford Brookes University
Prof. Leona Toker
Hebrew University and Shalem Academic College
Prof. François-Joseph Ruggiu
Sorbonne Université, CNRS and Oxford University
Anna Brzezińska
University of Lodz
Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat in Egodocumental Perspective
As Philippe Arbos wrote, we must not limit Marc Bloch to the role of a historian and university professor. To do so would be to diminish his persona. The historian and professor could not exist detached from life, the way he understood it. Arbos was the man who saved the Bloch’s manuscript of Témoignage (English: Testimony), written in 1940 and published in 1946 under the title Strange Defeat (in French: L’Étrange Défaite). I am reading Bloch to gain insight into his thoughts and emotions during the Phoney War. I am reading the thoughts of one of France’s leading historians, the co-founder of the revolutionary review “Annales”, as history comes for the historian. I am analysing the state of mind of a man facing the decline of his country and the world, whom he devoted his life to as a citizen and a scientist.
