Memory studies in Trento – Multidisciplinary perspectives (con G. Perletti e F. Frizzera)

Francesco Frizzera, Symbols and spaces in a border region. Interpreting the past in a museum / Simboli e spazi in una regione di confine. Interpretare il passato in un Museo 

The Italian War History Museum was founded in 1921 in Rovereto by private citizens, in a peripheral city recently annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. Unlike the other great war museums born in Europe or in the British dominions, it is not located in the capital city. The exhibition, the meaning of the spaces, the languages adopted are aimed to justify the young annexation and the reasons of the conflict, regardless of the subsequent policies adopted by Fascism. The Museum thus becomes the custodian of a tradition, which for decades will prove difficult to unhinge and deconstruct.

Greta Perletti, Organic memory and subjectivity in late nineteenth-century British culture / Memoria organica e soggettività nella cultura britannica di fine Ottocento

The representation of memory in British literary discourse undergoes significant changes after the 1870s, when novels increasingly foreground a fascination with the dysfunctions of recollection which were being discussed in Victorian mental science. By focusing in particular on the extent to which the concept of ‘organic memory’ was imagined as a being akin to the uncontrollable (and therefore pathological) return of unconscious memory, my talk will discuss the relations between memory and subjectivity in late 19th-century cultural discourse.

BIOS

• Francesco Frizzera is Director of the Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra in Rovereto. He is a contemporary historian, mainly working on population displacements on war times and military issues in frontier zones.
• Greta Perletti is Associate Professor in English Literature at the Department of Humanities in Trento. She is especially interested in Victorian literature and culture, with a focus, among others, on issues of memory and trauma.