The aim of the conference held by Sabancı University Gender and Women's Studies Forum in partnership with Central European University on April 25-27, 2014, was to examine how the experiences of war and political violence throughout the 20th century are remembered through a gendered lens, and to evaluate and uncover the contribution of feminist studies to memory and war studies. The conference was also the first conference held only by graduate students at Sabancı University.
Many academics from Turkey and from around the world attended the three-day international conference and the opening speeches were given by Elif İrem Az and Marhabo Saparova from the organizing committee, and Fuat Keyman, Director of the Istanbul Policy Center. The opening panel “Genocide Stories and Silences:A Feminist Approach to the Transmission of Trauma, Resistance, and Survival" started with Ayşe Gül Altınay, Sabancı University Faculty Member, and Arlene Avakian as the speakers.
The first day of the conference hosted the panels “Gendering War and Genocide”, “Masculinities and Femininities in War”, “Whose Justice, Whose Peace?”. The panels “Gendering Resistance”, “Narratives of Migration”, “Gendered Postmemories” were held on the second day.
On the last day of the conference, there were the panels “Memories of Loss, Mourning and Melancholia”, “Gender and Nationalism”, “Shades of the Military”, and “Gendered Representations in Literature and Cinema”. Sertaç Şen and Doğu Durgun from the organizing committee made the closing remarks on the last day of the conference. In the closing panel, Eren Keskin from the Legal Assistance Office against Sexual Abuse and Rape in Detention, Merve Arkun from the Conscientious Objection for Peace and Rela Mazali, the author of the book "Home Archeology" were the speakers.