UU Networkshop: Un/forgetting the Past

To continue building an interdisciplinary network among colleagues researching memory and heritage at Utrecht University we invite you to a one-day workshop on 10 December 2024, 09.30-17.00h.

Memory is always selective. Especially today, we experience the push and pull between an excess of the past made present in society and the desire to forget on the one hand, and on the other the imperative to remember. In this workshop we will focus on the relationship between memory and forgetting, taking forgetting (erasure, amnesia, displacement, repression, annulment, obsolescence, etc.) as a defining mode of our relationship with the past, rather than as memory’s silent partner. Scholars of multiple disciplines, including memory and heritage studies, have extensively discussed the selectiveness in representations of the past, which are always changing, open to contestation, societal use and abuse, subject to moral framings, and as such highly political. Some pasts have been publicly recognised, amplified, commemorated, and glorified, while others have been actively redacted or suppressed. This workshop aims at the exploration of such dynamic processes of un/forgetting. We are interested in historical and contemporary practices of un/forgetting across social groups, time periods, and different places around the world. We hope to explore the selective practices of historical consciousness constituent to the collective identities of ‘memory communities’ at multiple social levels. In other words: what are the actors, intentions, practices, and effects in processes of selecting the past?

Programme:

09: 30 Arrival and coffee

09:45  Welcome (Susanne Knittel, Renée Vulto & Christian Wicke)

10:00-13:00 Short Research Presentations by UU Colleagues

Session 1: Politics of Memory and Forgetting

10:00 – 10:10 ‘“This Is a Sacred Legend that No One Must Touch”: Narratives of Martyrdom and the Sacralization of History of the Second World War in Contemporary Russia.” Presenter: Maria Falina

10:10 – 10:20 “Dynamics of Remembering and Forgetting in the Recent Rise of Illiberal Memory.” Presenter: Michela Borzaga

10:20 – 10:30  “Monument to whom? Making fascist colonialism acceptable in Republican times.” Presenter: Roberta Biasillo

10:30 – 10:40 “Un/forgetting artists at risk: graphic journalism and curatorial practices in the works of Elettra Stamboulis.” Presenter: Monica Jansen

10:40 – 11:00: Q&A & Discussion

11:00 – 11:15: Coffee Break

Session 2: Heritage, Memory, and Restorative Justice

11:15– 11:25  “Longing for Order: Nostalgia, Conservatism, and the Digital Co-Production to Egypt’s ‘Good Old Days.”  Presenter: Nermin Elsherif

11:25 – 11:35 ‘“Xevieso, Bring Me Back Home:’ A research-theatre collab for heritage reclamation.” Presenters: Marleen de Witte (and, if possible, Nii Ocquaye Hammond)

11:35 – 11:45 “Empowering students to mediate the silenced narratives of slavery in the Dutch Caribbean: CEL as a tool for teaching critical heritage practices.” Presenters: Gertjan Plets and Christianne Smit.

10:45 – 12:00: Q&A & Discussion

12:00–12:10: Short break

Session 3: Heritage and Activism: Memory, Politics, and the Future

12:10 – 12:20 “Curating gaslands: the energyhistory of Groningen and its futures.” Presenter: Janna Oud Ammerveld

12:20 – 12:30 “The Paradoxes of Serifos: Industrial Memory under conditions of Touristification.” Presenters: Eleni Braat, Christian Wicke & Aggelis Zarokostas

12:30 – 12:40 “Art, Heritage, or Religion? Negotiating Indigenous African Traditions in the Religiously Diverse Context of Coastal Kenya.” Presenter: Erik Meinema

12:40 – 13:00: Q&A & Discussion