So, one week after the first workshop, what are the things that you are still considering? Was there anything in particular that you found thought-provoking or relevant to your own work? Let us know so we can keep the conversation going…
So, one week after the first workshop, what are the things that you are still considering? Was there anything in particular that you found thought-provoking or relevant to your own work? Let us know so we can keep the conversation going…
thecentenary.wordpress.com 
After Workshop 1, I remembered the quotation from Alan Bennett’s The History Boys that my students considered on their Their Past Your Future trip to Thailand and Australia (2008):
“..there’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it”
Does commemoration make something “safe” for future generations? On the other hand, what would be different to make it risky and what would that mean? Is it a matter of different narratives and making sure that they are acknowledged?
Carole
In thinking more about how contested histories converge on the occasion of a centenary, this 2012 radio program from This American Life has stayed on my mind: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/479/little-war-on-the-prairie
The occasion of the 150th anniversary of an episode of civil war becomes an occasion for the retracing and rewriting of how history is written and commemorated.
“Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen says, nobody ever talked about the most important historical event ever to happen there: in 1862, it was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged after a war with white settlers. John went back to Minnesota to figure out what really happened 150 years ago, and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it much after.”
In particular, what I find interesting about this piece is the way the creators trace and peel history-in-place at different sites in the landscape (at early 20th Century brass plaque in a farmhouse lawn, for example, or a town park, the site of execution, now a picnicking park with a creek running through it).
I’m also interested in the way the creators perform engaging with history as a personal process—of following stories and ancestors, of revisiting old sites with new knowledge—with mixed, powerful emotions. What kinds of pilgrimages do centenaries offer or occasion? How can a site host or make a place for complicated, furious, grieving, ironic or ambivalent feelings in visitors?
After all the really thought-provoking papers, discussions and feedback from workshop 1, I’ve had a go at collating some of the key questions that I think came up. They tie in with Carole and Alida’s points above. Might these provide a basis for investigating the significance of the centenary? What have I forgotten? What do you disagree with?
Joanne
Towards a Framework for Investigating the Significance of the Centenary?
Project Research Question: Why are centenaries understood to be significant?
What do we mean when we talk about a centenary event? What are the nature and mechanics of centenary events?
What are the elements of the events themselves? (e.g. processions, statues, music, exhibitions, writings)
What comes out of them?
What do the organisers/the audiences value in relation to the centenary in question?
Is there a ‘message’?
Are they represented as commemorations or celebrations or both? (‘verbal slippage’ (Andrews)?)
What spaces are there for multiple narratives in centenary events? (how are they maintained/collapsed?, what role to physical spaces/places play?)
How does the ‘significance’ manifest itself? – scale, cost, number of people involved, media coverage, geographical scope, strength of emotion, legacy?
What do we want to try and measure?
What do centenary organisers ‘do’ with the emotion/engagement they awake/impact they have?
What are the (in/visible) relationships between political and commercial interests and lobby/fan/veterans groups?
To what extent are there religious/quasi-religious/overtly secular frameworks?
To what extent is there an attempt to make the event accessible to non-fans, non-specialists, non-nationals, different age-groups? (do they awaken national/local/transnational sentiment?)
How are centenaries linked to changes in/uses of technology?
How do organisers deal with ‘multiple memory moments’ (Liddington) in order to maintain interest/funding? Is sustainability of centenary events desirable/intended?
How do centenaries intersect with other events/significant dates? How do organisers negotiate these?
Are centenaries simply safe commemorations, marketing hooks to do something that would have been done anyway, easy ways to elicit interest?
Does a centenary provide a restrictive framework outside of which it is impossible to move? To what extent do institutions feel the need to get on board even if they don’t have anything particularly new to say? What happens to those who opt-out?
How do centenary events accommodate/integrate specialist and non-specialist views (is it easier to integrate the specialist as we rely on mediated versions of the past?)
What lessons can be learnt around supporting centenary events?
” What do the organisers value?” , “…do they awaken national sentiment …?” and “what do organisers do with the ….impact they have?” are some of above questions that also relate to the political significance of centenaries in an authoritarian society . Should we therefore add a specific question such as :
” How should we measure politically driven intentionalist aspects of centenaries in certain societies ?”