Cultural Memory in Geographical Peripheral European Countries

Acume second General Meeting has been conceived as a seminar aiming at investigating and questioning the ideas of 'Europe' and 'national identity' starting from the cultural memory of those countries that, due to historical and political reasons, have been oppressed or marginalized. The focus is, therefore, on the nations forced into frontiers among more powerful European countries, and far from power. It is necessary to deconstruct an old and monolithic idea of Europe and underline that Europe was built upon artificial boundaries and contingent historical events. Thus, the reality of Europe can no longer be approached as an object framed within geographical constraints.
To investigate cultural memory in so called geographical and peripheral countries contributes to bring to light the processes of contamination and hybridisation that are constantly in progress; these are, in fact, fertile processes that make the cultural heritage of these countries plurivocal and multi-layered. The aim is to retrieve and revaluate these cultural heritages, too often neglected or marginalized: they not only comprise works of art and literature, but also other archives including more popular traditions. And, today, it is precisely these archives preserving autobiographies, memories, diaries, letters, that offer an extraordinary means to elaborate and represent collective and private memories. It is a difficult process, and yet it is a necessary one because it enriches our European cultural tradition, as well as deconstructs some dangerous stereotypes deeply embedded in our European history, a history which has been written, as Walter Benjamin says, by the winners.
While elaborating on these perspectives, European identity looks more like a juxtaposition of continuous movements, breakings, crossings of borders than a monolithic, static entity. Europe is the shifting product of its ceaseless transformations; its geography is mobile and its boundaries are constantly redrawn. European identity is therefore moulded upon cultural and linguistic differences and, inevitably, in time Europeans have been forced to learn the hard lesson of coexistence: to bring together the most complex diversities without muddling them all up.

Official Languages: English, French

Friday, May 7th

	Conference Room, University House, University of Malta
9.00 a.m.:	Peter Vassallo, University of Malta Welcome Speech
	Roger Ellul-Micallef, Rector University of Malta Introductory Address
9.15 a.m.:	Vita Fortunati, ACUME General Co-ordinator Introduction to Cultural Memory in Geographical Peripheral European Countries

9.30–11.15 a.m.	Chair: Peter Vassallo, University of Malta
	Jola Skulj, University Of Ljubljana Retold (Hi)stories of Identity: The Sense-Resource in Border-Crossing Literatures
	Martin Procházka, Charles University Prague “Where Is My Home?”: Revival Myth and National Boundaries in Nineteenth Century Czech and Slovak Culture
	Wladislaw Witalisz, Jagiellonian University Re-Shaping Cultural Memory in Poland: Education, National Identity and the Winds of Change

11.15 a.m.:	Coffee Break

11.30-13.15 a.m.	Chair: Elena Lamberti, University of Bologna
	Tina Aunin, Tallin Pedagogical University East/West Dichotomy: Russian and German Influences on the Perceptive Landscape of Estonia (The German Theatre in Tallin)
	Roumiana L. Stantcheva, Institute for Balkan Studies, Sofia, Bulgaria Self vs. Foreign in the Bulgarian and Romanian Modernist Literature of the 1920s
	Ivan Callus, University of Malta Figuring Malta’s War. A Comparative Look at Fictional Accounts of the Maltese Experience of World War II
	Clare Thake Vassallo, University of Malta Linguistic Identity and Versions of History: Post-colonial Issues in Malta

1.15 p.m.	Lunch

3.00-5.15 p.m.	Chair: Max Saunders, King’s College London
	Stephen Knight, University of Wales Two Lost Worlds: Languages, Culture and Reconstruction in Modern Wales
	Breda Gray, University of Limerick Migration, Memory Practices and Multiculturalism in the Republic of Ireland
	Gloria Lauri Lucente, University of Malta Memory and Identity in Trezza Azzopardi’s Novels
	Maria Lourdes Cancio, University of Lisbon Portuguese (E)migration and the Mirrors of Identity through Postmodern Fiction

5.15 p.m.:	Coffee Break

5.30-7.00 p.m.	Chair: Clare Thake Vassallo, University Of Malta
	Patricia Camilleri, University of Malta Museums as Expression of Cultural Identity
	Egidija Ramanauskaite and Irena Ragaišiene, Vytautas Magnus University Audiovisual Exposition of Folk Art and Traditions
	Marianne Boerch, University of Southern Denmark Hans Christian Andersen as Literary Oeuvre and as Cultural Icon: Reflections on the Bicentennial of Andersen’s Birth

	End of first Session
8.00 p.m.:	Dinner

Saturday, May 8th

	Aula Magna, Old University, Valletta
9.30-11.00 a.m.	Chair: Theo D’Haen, University of Leuven
	Monica Spiridon, University of Bucharest Borders: A View From The European Far East
	Stephanos Stephanides, University of Cyprus Border Thinking: The Cyprus Example
	Jury Talvet, Tartu University “Kalevipoeg”: A Great European Peripheral Epic

11.00 a.m.:	Coffee Break

11.15-1.00 p.m.	Chair: Adriana Corrado, Suor Orsola Benincasa Napoli
	Wieslaw Krajka, Marie Curie-Sklodowska University Strong Peripheral Identity: The Case of Poland
	Gabriella Imposti, University of Bologna Rewriting the Past after the Fall of the Soviet Empire
	Stella Borg Barthet, University of Malta Representations of Community in Maltese Poetry in English since Independence
	Adrian Grima, University of Malta Forging the National Imaginary in Maltese Literature

1.15 p.m.:	Lunch

3.00-4.00 p.m.	Chair: Rita Monticelli, University of Bologna
	Paola Toninato, University of Warwick Beyond Boundaries: A Discussion Of The Current Re-Definition Of Romani Identity Across Linguistic And National Borders
	Alberto De Bernardi, University of Bologna L’Italie d’aujourd’hui et ses mémoires divergentes.

4.00 p.m.:	Coffee Break

4.30 p.m.:	General Meeting: plenary session

8.00 p.m.:	Dinner

Lunch

End of first Session