234 - Regular Session. Collective Memory: Contesting the Meanings of the Past

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

This session contains papers that all focus on the processes by which the accepted meanings of a past event or period are negotiated. They focus on different empirical scales. The first paper draws on the concept of "colonial aphasia" to show how a museum devoted to Belgian colonial history bounds its displays in ways that allow it to avoid presenting a critical view of that past. Another examines discourse about a high-profile crime in Baltimore to show how local power dynamics shaped which of several original narratives came to define the event. The third paper examines how different narratives about a bombing in Italy were expressed, interacted and changed as court cases made their way through the Italian judiciary system. The final paper compares Holocaust remembrance in multiple countries to show how it is used as a tool for establishing the moral authority of domestic histories.

Sub Unit

• Collective Memory

Session Organizer

• Suzanna M. Crage, University of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• Cheating History: Blocking a Difficult Past at the Royal Museum for Central Africa - Jenny Folsom, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• A Temporal Ecology of Events: Piazza Fontana as a Case Study - Sabrina Nardin, University of Arizona

• Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Politics in Turkey and Spain - Alejandro Baer, University of Minnesota; Yagmur Karakaya, University of Minnesota

Discussant

• Christina Simko, Williams College