Workshop: Oral and Visual Memories of Migration: Interdisciplinary Responses and Approaches to the Bodies Across Borders in Europe Project

The project Bodies Across Borders in Europe: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond proposes to study intercultural connections in contemporary Europe. These connections are woven through the faculties of embodied subjects – memory, visuality and mobility – and concern the movement of people, ideas and images across the borders of European nation-states with a focus on Italy and the Netherlands. Memory, here, is understood not merely as oral or direct memory but also as cultural memory, that reveals itself in several cultural products. Our research aims to understand the possibility of new forms of European belonging as they develop in an increasingly diasporic world. After having been an area of emigration for centuries, today’s Europe is not only a key site of immigration but also a crucial point of arrival in a global network designed by mobile human beings.

The BABE project is based at the Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute (Florence).

The BABE research team is glad to announce a workshop with Utrecht University through CCHR (research focus area Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights), since the latter’s central aims (producing critically engaged research on citizenship in/and Europe) coincide with the objectives of the BABE project. Scholars and artists/curators affiliated with Utrecht University who specialize in issues of migration, memory and visuality in relation to Europe are invited to present responses and reflections from their field of expertise on the aims and results of the BABE project.

Attendance is free, but space is limited. If you wish to attend the seminar, please send an email to Milica Trakilovic: M.Trakilovic@uu.nl

Format

Morning (09:00-11:30)

• Introduction by Luisa Passerini with Milica Trakilovic: Studying Migration in Europe through the Context of Italy and the Netherlands
• Talk by Ann Rigney, drawing on some themes/results from the BABE project. Title: Bodies that (don’t) matter: memory and affiliation.
• Discussion and Q&A

Lunch (11:30-12:30)

Afternoon (12:30-15:00)

Two panels, each with a specific theme related to the workshop, encompassing the following format:

1^st panel: BABE researcher/s Iris van Huis and Leslie Hernandez Nova + presentation by scholar from outside the project: Rosemarie Buikema. Panel theme is Art, visuality (and memory).

2^nd panel: BABE researcher/s Milica Trakilović and Gabriele Proglio + presentation by scholar from outside the project: Milena Marchesi. Panel theme is Europe, postcoloniality (and memory).

Reflections and closing statements (14:45-15:00)