Category Conference announcements

Call for papers: “Archives during rebellions and wars. From the age of Napoleon to the cyber war era”

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19-21 May 2021, Archivio di Stato di Milano, Milan, Italy

The CFP can be downloaded as PDF here: https://closeencountersinwarhome.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/symposium-asmi-2021-call-eng-2.pdf

DESCRIPTION

The title of this symposium makes reference to a paper presented on the 29th of November, 1914, at the School of Paleography, Diplomatics and Archival Science of the State Archives of Milan by Giovanni Vittani, who would become the director of that institution in 1920 until 1938. Clearly, a few months after the outbreak of the First World War, this subject was of great topical interest. Vittani discussed the heavy losses suffered by archives in Italy and abroad in the course of history, due to wars, revolutions and revolts. He concluded his speech stating that the only way of minimizing the destruction of archives, apart from international laws and sanctions, would be the development of a true «public interest»: only
«when

will be universally known for why they exist, that is, to everyone’s advantage, to the harm of no one, it will be inconceivable that anybody would think to endanger them on purpose». But this was wishful thinking, as the State Archives of Milan itself, in the summer of 1943, when Milan was heavily bombed, lost a large quantity of documents.


Archival preservation was always at risk during wars and rebellions, but during the age of Napoleon considerable innovations were introduced in this field, as in many others, and we are still today familiar with them. In earlier regimes, archives either were voluntarily destroyed, or became the spoils of war for practical reasons, such as using their information in order to rule new territories or, vice versa, to deprive enemies of the same information. From the beginning of the 19th century to the present day, new direct or indirect causes of danger for archives have developed. As shown in the book Archivio del mondo. Quando Napoleone confiscò la storia, by Maria Pia Donato, it was Napoleon who wanted to create a «great archives of the world» by transferring to Paris, the capital of the new Empire, documents from all of the occupied countries for the sole purpose of symbolizing the birth of a new universal history. From that time on, the historical and symbolical importance of archives has transformed them into political instruments for confirming or discrediting the legitimacy of wars and rebellions fought in the name of a national identity or an ideology.
Two hundred years after Napoleon’s death, the State Archives of Milan wishes to reflect on the theme of archives during wars and rebellions, aware of the fact that Vittani’s wish is still far from coming true, and that probably it will never come true. Wars of the third Millennium, which are also fought cybernetically, definitely refute the idea that archives are «to the advantage of all» and, above all, «of harm to no one». Two centuries after the death of the man who dreamed about the creation of a great
universal archives, colossal corporations have succeeded in collecting and managing an enormous bulk of data which, as the new «archives of the world», may become powerful instruments for influencing people’s thought and actions, even to the point of fostering or stirring up new wars.


SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE


Fabio Caffarena, Benedetto Luigi Compagnoni, Antonino De Francesco, Filippo De Vivo, Maria Pia Donato, Luciana Duranti, Pierluigi Feliciati, Andrea Giorgi, Marco Lanzini, Leonardo Mineo, Marco Mondini, Stefano Morosini, Stefano Moscadelli, Raffaele Pittella, Olivier Poncet, Stefano Vitali.


STRUCTURE


The symposium will be structured into 5 sessions, each one dedicated either to an historical period or to one of the themes listed below, depending on the proposals that will be submitted. Each presentation will last 20 minutes, followed by a 5-minute period for questions and answers.


SUBMISSIONS


The deadline for the submission of proposals is September 30th, 2020. Proposals will consist of an abstract, in English and Italian (400 words maximum), a curriculum vitae showing the speaker’s principal areas of expertise and research. Papers may be presented either in English or in Italian. For speakers who prefer to present in another language, a simultaneous translation will be provided, under the condition that the text of the paper be submitted well in advance of the event. However, an English or Italian translation of the paper will be required for publication in the Proceedings. Final papers may be presented in English or in Italian, with an indicative deadline for the submission by August 31st, 2021. The subsequent publication of the Proceedings with an international publisher is expected. E-mail for submissions: convegnoasmi2021@gmail.com.


THEMES


1 – Archives, wars, and diplomacy

Management, transformation, and creation of archives before, during or after a war;

How archivists and their profession change during war time;

Archives of diplomacy.

2 – Secret archives and public archives

Access to records and archives;

Archives as instrument of power;

Archives as instrument for exercising civil rights.


3 – Archives and “Empire”, Archives and “Nation”, Archives and “De-colonization”

Archives as symbols of power;

Archives as identity;

Archives during crises, revolts and transitional periods.


4 – Archives as “Instruments” and Archives as “Monuments”

The retention and/or disposition of archives in order to build an historical narrative;

The construction of archives (collections of autographs, correspondence, letters, oral sources, diaries,
etc.; community archives);

Dismembered, dispersed, destroyed, migrated and removed archives / archives preserved deliberately
or accidentally.


5 – Archives and technology

Archives as technological products and instruments;

Reliability and authenticity of archives in the era of cyber security and artificial intelligence;

Data use and control.

Forms, History, Narrations, Big Data: Morphology and Historical Sequence

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International conference, Turin, 21-22 November 2019

The conference will address issues in the field of historiography, literary criticism and the wider area of interpretative practices of artistic and literary works organizing a dialogue among various disciplines and perspectives. The aim is to resume the critical and philosophical debate on the issue of form and its modern variations or developments, first articulated in the works of Georg Simmel, André Jolles, Aby Warburg, Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, and others. This debate revolved on the dialectics of sequence and simultaneity, diachronic succession and system, in order to gain a richer understanding of the notions of transformation and structure (central to structuralism, post-structuralism) as well as literary and artistic interpretation (central to hermeneutics).

Conference programmeDownload

Announcement: Shadow Agents of War Workshop

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A fascinating event is taking place next week on 4th June at the University of Edinburgh: a one day workshop titled “Shadow Agents of War”, which will focus on the role in war of certain players who are largely overlooked by scholars of war and conflict, such as refugees, convicts, commoners and even animals. The workshop also promises to tackle methodological issues and point to relevant sources. The workshop is co-organised by Stephen Bowd, who is currently working on a project on gender and early modern warfare, Sarah Cockram, who focuses on the early modern period, too, and is interested in historical animal studies, and John Gagné whose current book project is on transcultural war in the early sixteenth century.

The workshop will have three sessions: The Unwilling Agents of War; The Organisers of War; The Suppliers of War.

The full programme can be accessed by following this link: https://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/shadow-agents-of-war/

Conference announcement: “Giellismo e Azionismo. Cantieri aperti”

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15th edition, Turin, Istoreto, 17-18 May 2019

The Istituto Piemontese per la Storia della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea “Giorgio Agosti” will host the 15th edition of the research seminar “Giellismo e azionismo – cantieri aperti” on the 17th and 18th of May 2019.

The complete program of the seminar can be downloaded at:

http://www.istoreto.it/ricerca/giellismo-e-azionismo-cantieri-aperti/#