Seminars on Remembrance Commemoration and Memorials

Programme for September 17  -  2009

 

10:30  RBL Philip Wilson – County Chairman Warwickshire, Royal British Legion

Reflections - The Spirit of Remembrance.  

 11:00 Professor Susan Mary Grant  – University of Newcastle

Constructing a Commemorative Culture: American Veterans from Valley Forge through Vietnam

synopsis: ’This paper explores the origins and contested commemorative practices surrounding both the construction of national military cemeteries-the first public ‘federal’ space in the republic-and the development of Memorial Day itself following the American Civil War. It traces American commemorative practices from the earliest invocations of the Revolutionary War veteran as patriotic exemplar through to Vietnam, concluding with a consideration of the dichotomy inherent in America’s response to the military dead of the early twenty-first century; where the denial of the flag-draped coffin stands in sharp contrast to the inauguration, in 2008, of a ‘National Moment of Remembrance’ on Memorial Day, a commemorative act with both personal and patriotic/political resonance designed to contain and control the death, and responses to it, resulting from war.’

11:30 Gerd Knischewski – University of Portsmouth

The role of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraeberfuersorge in Commemorating WWII.

synopsis:In my talk I will outline the difficulties (West) Germans faced and still face in establishing patterns of commemoration for their war dead which will be backed by a broad consensus in the wider German society. The inclusion/exclusion of the Holocaust makes any German remembrance a difficult and ambivalent activity.

 12:00 Rachel Ibreck   – Bristol University

Commemoration of the 1994 Rwandan  genocide in Brussels

synopsis:This paper will discuss how and why memorials become sites of political contestation with reference to an empirical study of the commemoration of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in Brussels. It will trace the history of these commemorations and offer insights into why the Tutsi diaspora seek to promote remembrance of the genocide internationally, showing how the practice is related to demands for accountability and rights, and to trauma and mourning. It will also discuss counter-memorials organised by other Rwandan exiles living in Brussels, which seek to promote an alternative account of the genocide. It will consider the difficult questions this example raises around freedom of speech and the idea of memorialisation as a mode of symbolic reparation.

12:30 Lunch and Discussion

1:30 Feedback from Discussion

   2:00 Dr Maggie Andrews – University of Staffordshire

Contemporary Media Remembrance

synopsis:In the period since the First World War remembrance has been experienced both through a range of media. Remembrance services were broadcast by the BBC in the 1920s and 30s, special editions of Newspapers and Magazines have been produced in the post –war era to commemorate particular events or lives. In recent years new media technologies, have opened up a plethora of new possibilities of remembrance via digital television, the internet and social network sites. This paper will survey contemporary media remembrance and discuss the potentially more diverse, democratic, informal and domestic modes of remembrance they offer whilst acknowledging that these sites of remembrance still retain an iconography familiar from more formal sites of remembrance

2:30 Keynote Speaker  -  Professor Penny Summerfield   -  University of Manchester

The Memory of the Second World War in Cinema during and after 1939-45: nation, class and gender in films about the war in the air and at sea

 synopsis:Films about the war in the air and at sea were an essential part of the British propaganda effort in the Second World War. They also occupied a prominent position in the production of a popular memory of the war afterwards. Whether they were made during the war or afterwards, such films of combat and conquest had much in common. They evaluated the men who pitted themselves against the threat of death in the national cause. They depicted the war effort in relation to both the allies and the enemy. However, there are striking differences between wartime and post-war cinematic representations. In wartime the desired but not the actual outcome of war was known. Films were meant to serve the purpose of making that result more likely. In the post-war era the certainty of victory was a given. The films addressed another agenda to do with the restoration of Britain’s bruised international prestige, particularly in the 1950s. In wartime, films addressed the civilian population of the home front, whose contributions to the achievement of victory they emphasised. As a result wartime films captured some of the social diversity of wartime Britain. In contrast, post-war films were not concerned with the home front and its differences of region, gender and social class. Their aim was not to stimulate national unity, but to recuperate British masculine and military prowess. Yet, ironically, some of the post-war productions have been seen as anti-war films.

The memory of the Second World War constructed in British cinema during and after the war is, thus, complex. This paper will discuss these issues in relation to two wartime and two post-war films concerned with the war at sea and the war in the air. These are:  In Which We Serve (1942) The Way to the Stars (1945) Angels One Five (1952) and The Cruel Sea (1953). The paper will explore the production histories of these films, analyse the interpretations of the Second World War that they offer, and discuss their reception by the public as entertainment, as history, and as memory.

3:00 – Tea and Close