Contemporary and Popular Memorialisation seminar

12 February 2009  at the NMA

10:30 The Reverend Canon, Dr Pete Wilcox, Canon Chancellor, Lichfield Cathedral

Remembering Jesus: a brief introduction to remembrance in the Christian tradition

Synopsis: At the Last Supper, as he distributed bread and wine, Jesus told his disciples to ‘Do this in remembrance of me’.  For two thousand years, this act of remembrance has been central to the worship of the Church.  What do Christians think they are doing, when they remember Jesus in this way?  What does the Christian understanding of ‘remembrance’ have to contribute to contemporary discussion?

11:00 Dr Iain Robertson Senior Lecturer in Human Geography of the University of Gloucestershire

‘Ours; not yours’: Memory, Identity and the Memorialisation of Conflict in the Scottish Highlands

Synopsis: This paper explores the materialisation of collective memory in the form of a series of memorials to land seizure on the Hebridean island of Lewis and addresses questions that arise directly out of the intersection between identity, memory and public history. Unlike the vast majority of memorials those on Lewis do not materialise national and hegemonic identity as they are, in fact, memorials to illegality. Thus, the mnemonic that is the Lewis memorial cairns serves to write into the landscape local and conflictual identities.

11:30 Dr Mark Imber, Director of teaching at the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews

Attitudes to Remembrance; New wars, new attitudes? A pilot-study among final year school students in Fife

Synopsis:This paper will report on recent research which looks at how and how well the culture of remembrance is transmitted to the late teenage age group; who would have been, after 1916 and 1939 the ‘conscription’ age group. The session will provide feedback from piloting a questionnaire and extended tutorial-type sessions with local school VIth form classes, addressing their personal level of involvement in remembrance activities and focussing in debate on a number of key variables that distinguish modern wars from the world wars which created the now  familiar features of contemporary remembrance culture.

12:00 – 12:30 Walk to FEPOW Museum and SANDS Memorial

12.30-1400        Discussion on  : Contemporary and Popular Memorialisation will take place over lunch

1400 Dr Kate Flynn, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of West England

The Redevelopment of the Former Maze Prison / Long Kesh: Public Policy, Stakeholder Engagement and Contested Heritage in Northern Ireland

Synopsis:Since the prison’s closure in 2000, the 360-acre site has been earmarked for redevelopment through a public policy approach emphasizing the provision of long-term social and economic benefits to local communities and the region’s people as a whole. This talk will explore some of the problems with the implementation of this public policy approach to contested heritage with particular reference to stakeholder engagement, especially with former political prisoners – republican and loyalist – and their communities.

14:30 Keynote Speakers: Dr Ian Atherton and Dr Philip Morgan Senior Lecturers in History Keele University

The Battlefield War Memorial

Synopsis:The battlefield memorial, however broadly conceived, is designed to preserve a memory of the act of conquest or, in the rare cases of memorials erected by the defeated, a memory of resistance, as well as the more straightforward commemoration of the dead. Where the memory of the landscape of war persists there must be a commitment to preservation and a continuing, if not necessarily, a continuous ritual.

Each battlefield is thus commemorated or forgotten by contemporaries, but also has an evolving life history. The paper will consider the evidence for the commemoration of the site of battles, principally in Britain, from the early middle ages to the beginning of the twentieth century. It will discuss two parallel themes, the contemporary memorialisation of the site and the later life histories of the site.

1500 approximately Closing comments and refreshments