• Organised by Michael Böss (contact: Michael Böss)

In Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (1994), the American historian John Gillis suggested a typology of commemorations based on three periods: a pre-national, a national and a post-national period.

During the pre-national period, commemorations were either local or universal, and the elites and the masses tended not to share commemorative rites. The subsequent ‘national’ cult of commemoration served to unite people within territorial nation-states. This implied a degree of democratisation of official commemorative events and monuments. In the third period, there would not be a total demise, but a weakening of national commemoration.

Gillis also predicted that we might be returning to the medieval pattern: Commemorations would become more local and more universal (‘global’). He also believed, however, that in order for societies to cohere, there would be a need for public commemoration. Without the identifications that commemorations help create, citizens would find it difficult to interact and cooperate.

–This workshops invites papers that address both empirical cases and theoretical cases on these issues, with special reference to commemorations and memories of war, conflict and crisis.

Workshop programme