Heroes and Victims in the Creation of a European Identity
Culture Memory in Europe: Heroes and Victims in the Creation of a European Identity
Seminario online organizzato in collaborazione con il progetto Cleo e il Centro studi di politica estera e opinione pubblica nell’ambito dei corsi di Storia contemporanea, Storia contemporanea d'Europa fra Est e Ovest, Storia dei paesi slavi di Mauro Elli e Storia del mondo contemporaneo di Claudia Baldoli e Marco Cuzzi.
Organizzatore: Mauro Elli.
Partecipano: Giulia Lami, Markus Hermann Meckl, Kiprianos Pandelis e Mila Bakić.
The project CLEO (Cultural Memory in Europe: Commemoration, memory making and identity in the 21st Century) is an Erasmus+ project investigating the change of memory-making and commemoration in the ‘post-heroic’ society in Europe. The seminar will present how during the 19th century each war and suffering in Europe produced new heroic figures and how at the end of the 20th century and after WWII the heroes seemed to have been replaced by victims in the public comme- morations.
The seminar will examine the “shift from heroization to victimization“ in the 21st century and explore the changing in the perception and transformation of memory-making when public recognition and commemorative practices were no longer attributed to national heroes but to the victims of conflicts and wars. This phenomenon, which was first manifested in Europe after 1945 had at its forefront the rehabilitation of the victims of the Holocaust and has led to the commemora- tion of many other traumatic histories and to the emergence of novel manifesta- tions of global forms of memory.
At the end of the seminar, the students will receive information about the CLEO Summer University where 25 students will work together for 5 days exploring the theme of cultural memory in Europe and discuss the changing perception of the national heroes by examining representations, practices and discourses on heroism and victimhood and preparing an online exhibition.