Collective memory after the nation-state

In cooperation with the Faculty of Humanities (UvA) and Utrecht University

Event

Globalization, migration and the internet are changing the ways in which people fashion their identities. How can we rethink collective memory, heritage and museums to fit these changes? With: Marie-Aude Baronian, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Chiara De Cesari, Susan Legêne, Wayne Modest and Ann Rigney.

Creating the sense of a shared past as a basis for a common future has been a vital ingredient in nation-building and ideas of citizenship. Memory has been a key element in drawing the border between those who belong together and those who don’t. But nations and nation-states are no longer self-evident as frameworks for producing such shared narratives and for managing the material and immaterial heritage which underpins them. Globalisation and Europeanisation, postcoloniality, the web: these are all creating new facts on the ground and giving rise to new narratives and social imaginaries that cut across national borders. 

How should we rethink collective memory and the management of heritage to make it better suited to this changing world? A panel of speakers will address this question on the occasion of the publication of Transnational Memory, edited by Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney. Luiza Bialasiewicz and Wayne Modest will respond to the book and initiate a discussion with volume’s contributors Marie-Aude Baronian and Susan Legêne. There will be time for questions from the audience and after the program drinks will be provided.

About the speakers

Marie-Aude Baronian is Associate Professor of Film and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. She has published extensively on filmmaking and visual arts in relation to issues of memory, archive, testimony, and diaspora. Her current project relates to fashion and costume in film practices and cultural theory.

Luiza Bialasiewicz is Jean Monnet Professor of EU External Relations in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her work focuses on the political geographies of European integration and on European borders, with some of the most recent research looking specifically at the role of third states in the out-sourcing of EU border control in the Mediterranean, as well as wider strategies of securitization of the Mediterranean space.

Chiara De Cesari is Assistant Professor in European Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has published extensively in her research focus areas, namely, memory, heritage and broader cultural politics and the ways in which these change under conditions of globalization and postcoloniality.

Susan Legêne is Professor of Political History at VU University and former Head of the Curatorial Department of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. Her research focuses on citizenship and the cultural meaning of the colonial past in processes of nation-building since the nineteenth century, and on the impact and meaning of digitally mediated public history.  

Wayne Modest is the Head of the Research Centre for Material Culture at the National Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands. He was previously Head of the Curatorial Department at the Tropenmuseum and Keeper of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum in London. He has curated several exhibitions including Materializing Slavery (2007) and The Body Adorned: Dressing London (2012); he has also published extensively in the fields of museum studies and historical anthropology.  

Ann Rigney is Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University.  She has published widely in the field of modern memory cultures, with projects focussed both on the nineteenth century and on contemporary developments. She has played an active role in cultural memory studies and coordinates the network in transnational memory studies: www.nitmes.net'  

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