The keynote lecture of our seminar series National Histories, Imperial Memories: Representing the Past in Interwar Central Europe will take place at
18.00 CET on 5 October 2021
on Zoom.
Nancy Wingfield (Northern Illinois University)
will present:
Category: Events
CFP: Exhibitions, New Nations and the Human Factor, 1873–1939
CALL FOR PAPERS
Exhibitions, new nations and the human factor, 1873–1939
CRAACE symposium, 4–5 April 2022
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris
Keynote speaker: Professor Mary Pepchinski, Technical University Dresden
It is widely recognised that new political entities that came to existence as nation states from the end of the nineteenth century sought to legitimise their identities externally through participation at world’s fairs and internally through consolidation of their national collections in museums and galleries of art and design. While the official motivations and presentations have been examined quite thoroughly, the agency of many individuals involved in different stages of exhibition design has been overlooked.
This symposium aims to explore the relations – including discrepancies – between the official narratives of exhibitions, as devised by the organisers, and the narratives by individuals whose participation helped to construct the meaning and content of the exhibits. By this, the discussion moves away from the focus on the state apparatus and official ideologies towards the people who designed the national presentations, worked in them and visited them. Our main focus is on how exhibitions were used to consolidate new political identities. The period covered by the symposium begins with the Vienna World Fair of 1873 and concludes with the outbreak of the Second World War. It saw important changes in political and geographical circumstances globally, with the creation and recreation of, for instance, Romania, Turkey, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary.
Remembering the Empire – National Histories, Imperial Memories Session 1
Session 1 of our online seminar series National Histories, Imperial Memories: Representing the Past in Interwar Central Europe will take place at
18.00 CET on 21 September 2021
on Zoom, featuring papers by
Robert Dassanowsky (University of Colorado)
and
Béla Rásky (Wiesenthal Institute, Vienna)
National Histories, Imperial Memories: Representing the Past in Interwar Central Europe
In the successor states of the Habsburg Empire, official narratives of history tended to downplay the imperial context and highlight the continuous, distinct history of the nation. Nevertheless, while 1918 was undoubtedly a watershed moment, it did not suddenly obliterate the shared past. The built and artistic heritage of the Empire was still present and had to be dealt with, whether through appropriation, destruction, or reinterpretation. The nationalities of the former Empire were in constant interaction with each other, whether politically allied or opposed, and they still lived together in multiethnic territories such as Slovakia or Transylvania. Commemorations and representations of the national past were conceived with an eye on the ‘others’. Remembrance was polyphonic, with different groups forming their own narratives, even if these were not always officially recognised.
The seminar series National Histories, Imperial Memories will examine how visual culture in interwar central Europe engaged with the shared imperial past. It will feature papers on topics ranging from the postwar fate of pre-1918 public monuments and built heritage to representations of the past in film, and from commemorations of war to idealised depictions of rural life.
The events will take place on Zoom, every fortnight starting on 21 September 2021 and concluding on 14 December 2021. The sessions will begin at 18.00 CET.
CFP: National Histories, Imperial Memories: Representing the Past in Interwar Central Europe and Beyond
CALL FOR PAPERS
National Histories, Imperial Memories
Representing the Past in Interwar Central Europe and Beyond
CRAACE online seminar series, Autumn 2021