[ecrea] CFP: Sites of Transit in Europe from WW2 to the present. History, Spaces, Memories

*Sites of Transit in Europe from WW2 to the present.*
*History, Spaces, Memories*
Fondazione Campo Fossoli (Carpi, Modena - Italy)
October 4-5, 2018

The conference aims to analyse the roles and uses of transit camps and 
sites in the European historical, geographical and cultural context from 
WW2 to today from a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective. The 
two-day conference is organized by the Fondazione Campo Fossoli, whose 
mission is to preserve and transmit the history and memories of this 
Italian site of transit.
Fossoli is a key example of a site of transit within the broader history 
of forced population displacements in 20th-century Europe. In 1942 and 
1943, under the Fascist Royal Army, Fossoli worked as a POW camp for 
British prisoners. In 1943-1944, under the control of the Fascists and, 
afterward, the Nazis, Fossoli was a transit camp and site of deportation 
to Nazi concentration and extermination camps for Jews and political 
opponents of Fascism,  arrested by the Nazis, and transported to Germany 
as forced labourers or victims of genocide. In the post-war years up 
until the 1970s, Fossoli hosted “undesirable foreign refugees”, the 
Nomadelfia Catholic community founded for orphans, and finally the San 
Marco village for Istrian-Dalmatian refugees. Several of the major 
turning points in 20th-century history intertwine in Fossoli, making it 
a key case-study.
The Fossoli case touches on a number of important general issues for the 
study of sites of transit. The site of transit is a place in which 
different memories and meanings overlap. Decade after decade, transit 
camps are used and re-used for different, sometimes antagonistic 
purposes, with heterogeneous events and stories that write and overwrite 
the very meaning of the place. Sites of transit are places in which 
meanings are stratified through time, and in which their uses and the 
different roles they play change together with the historical context.
We invite abstracts for papers that deal with but are not limited to the 
following aspects:
- The history of Fascist and Nazi concentration and POW camps and of the 
different deportation paths in the territories occupied by the Nazis; 
the reconstruction of the Nazi concentration camp system network and its 
organization; the history/the analysis of the complex phase that 
followed the conflict, from the attempts at post-war justice to the 
failed purges, from the management of war refugees, returning soldiers 
and displaced persons, to forced migrations.
  - The reconstruction of the semiotic transformations that sites of 
transit undergo through the decades, focusing on symbolic resources and 
different discursive practices: from the collection of individual 
memories of those who lived and live in the camps, to the way in which 
local populations perceive the camp as a inner and/or alien space within 
the community fabric; from media discourses on the camp to the policies 
that constitute the camp as object or subject of institutional practices 
from security (POW or refugee camp for controlling migration flows) to 
memory (the camp as place of memory).
  - The striking opposition between the banality and fragility of the 
architecture of transit-, concentration- and extermination camps, and 
the heavy symbolic and memorial dimension that these artefacts embody; 
their material conservation, museification; the uses of the historical 
sites; the transmission of memory narratives that live within these 
spaces (and that these very spaces “witness”) and that confer meaning on 
places that otherwise appear as deprived of any recognizable 
architectonic shape and material stability.
We invite submissions from scholars of History, Philosophy, 
Architecture, Semiotics, Memory Studies, Museology, Public History, 
Cultural Heritage, History Teaching.
  We invite abstracts in Italian or English (max 600 words) that focus 
either on Fossoli or on other sites of transit in Italy and Europe (also 
in a comparative perspective). Abstracts should be accompanied by a 
brief biographical profile (max 300 words). The abstract should describe 
the topic and the specific object of analysis as well as aims and 
methodology, accompanied by a bibliography (max 10 titles that will not 
count towards the 600 words limit). Proposals will be evaluated and 
selected by the scientific committee.
Abstract, profile and bibliography should be sent to 
*(ricerca /at/ centrostudifossoli.org)* by *May 31 2018*.

Accepted contributors will be asked to send a summary of their paper in 
Italian or English (max 2000 words, notes and bibliography not included) 
to the scientific committee and discussants by *July 31, 2018*. The 
selected contributors will have 20 minutes to present the paper at the 
conference.
After the conference, a selected number of speakers will be invited to 
contribute to a book to be published within the Fondazione Campo Fossoli 
book series.

*Organizers:*
Matteo Cassani Simonetti (Centro Studi Fondazione Campo Fossoli and 
Università di Bologna)
Roberta Mira (Centro Studi Fondazione Campo Fossoli and Università di 
Bologna)
Daniele Salerno (Centro Studi Fondazione Campo Fossoli and Università di 
Bologna)

*Scientific Committee:*
Andrea Borsari (Università di Bologna)
Lorenzo Bertucelli (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia)
Matteo Cassani Simonetti (Centro Studi Fondazione Campo Fossoli and 
Università di Bologna)
Robert Gordon (University of Cambridge)
Giovanni Leoni (Università di Bologna)
Marzia Luppi (Fondazione Campo Fossoli)
Didier Musiedlak (Université Paris X – Nanterre)
Roberta Mira (Centro Studi Fondazione Campo Fossoli, Università di Bologna)
Daniele Salerno (Centro Studi Fondazione Campo Fossoli, Università di 
Bologna)
Guri Schwarz (Università di Genova)
Patrizia Violi (Università di Bologna)
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