Summer School "Dissonant memories: geographies of migration, colonialism and trauma"

This Summer School is part of the activities of the Memory Lab research center at the University of Bologna and of its cluster on “territories of memory” that intertwines radical history and critical geography, with the goal of challenging methodological nationalism in memory studies. The Summer School aims at exploring mutual entanglements between colonialism, migration and trauma, both in the present and in a historical perspective, interrogating the existence of “memories from below” and counter-archives. Dissonant memories that have been transmitted, contested or forgotten about migration, colonialism and trauma will be the common thread of the School’s theoretical focus. Unfolding the relationships between migration, colonialism and trauma is nowadays essential for understanding current transformations of racial capitalism and forms of exploitation through dispossession, and some of the School’s activities will be dedicated to the socio-political legacies of Italian colonialism. The School will target MA and PhD students interested in exploring memory-making processes with respect to migration movements, colonialism and collective traumas in different parts of the globe, and the ways in which those processes shape our present and are reactivated in current mobilisations.The School will run over five days, and will include master classes, participatory seminars, keynotes and half-day field trips and urban hiking in the city of Bologna.