The Málaga Symposium, a joint project between Dickinson College and the University of Málaga, took place June 13-15, in Málaga, Spain. The symposium, Memory and Society in International and Comparative Perspectives, included presentations from five Dickinson professors and one young alumnus.
Symposium presenters discussed various issues related to memory, trauma and identity at the level of the individual and of whole societies.
Marcelo Borges, outgoing director of the Dickinson in Málaga program and associate professor of history, helped to organize the symposium. He hoped it would “bring together faculty from Dickinson and the University of Málaga to discuss research of mutual interest and expand and strengthen academic contacts, especially in the social sciences.”
Borges presented a paper with Susan Rose, professor of sociology, titled “The Melting Pot and the Pioneers: Historical Memory, Collective Memory, and Immigration in Argentina,” and assisted with Tan Huynh ’07’s presentation on a paper titled “ ‘My Childhood Ended Then’: Images of the Civil War and the Postwar Years in Childhood and Early Youth Recollections.”
The conference “reinvigorated me to continue my own oral history research in Angola,” said Assistant Professor of History Jeremy Ball. He presented “ ‘I Escaped in a Coffin’: Remembering Angolan Forced Labor from the 1940s.”
Karl Qualls, associate professor of history, presented “What Time Is It in Sevastopol?: Memories of the Russian Past in a Post-Soviet Ukrainian City.” He felt the conference was “an ideal opportunity to learn more about the Spanish Civil War and to make contacts with new friends and colleagues as I begin my next research project on Spanish children who were evacuated to the Soviet Union during Spain’s Civil War.”
Additional presentations from Dickinson faculty members Kim Rogers, professor of history, and Rose were titled “Look Back to Danger: The Intimacy of Violence in the Era of Segregation” and “Trauma and Memory: From Domestic Violence to Political Terror,” respectively.
“I was able to gain a much better understanding of the very interesting and important research our colleagues at the University of Málaga are doing on the Spanish Civil War,” said Rose. “This is the kind of conference that really builds intellectual and personal relationships with those who are doing similar work in very different contexts.”
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