The concept of the Summer School

Collective Memory-Work relies on the input of each participant. The Summer School is explicitly NOT a didactic teaching event with pre-scheduled lectures. It is rather a facilitated process of shared learning based on the unique input of all participants.

  • In two interactive online-meetings we will exchange our initial thoughts, experiences, questions in relation to the topic (here: the concept of “the nation”). We will sketch out a shared focus for our inquiry. We will all write a short memory-scene (approx. 1 – 2 pages) of a personal experience. These stories will be the core material for the Summer School.
  • When we meet in person we read and analyse the self-generated texts line with a set procedure. Following from the analysis of the texts we refer back to our initial discussions and gradually enhance our understanding of the original problematic.
  • The work with our own stories will be complemented by creative work formats (e.g. role play, thematic walk).
  • The whole process will be a slow, steady, thorough, collective exploration of the topic and our own positioning in relation to “the nation”.

Nationalism is all around us, it permeates everyday life in the most banal ways that are hardly noticeable, and it erupts in often violent excessive manifestations. For nationalism to become an “…ism” it requires a concept of (the) nation that undergirds it.

We will try to identify concepts of the nation that we have acquired ourselves, be they common sense or elaborated theories. We will try to understand how the nation comes into us and how we come into the nation; how we make sense of our position in history, as individuals and as members of larger social groupings; how we enact our own positioning in everyday life situations.

Collective Memory-Work relies on bridging a supposed divide between practice and theory, common sense and good sense. When we analyse our self-generated memory-scenes we will refer to available theories as points of reference, e.g. such concepts as ‘imagined communities’, ‘banal nationalism’, ‘interactional ritual chains’, and we will assess their usefulness for an enhanced understanding of concepts of the nation and our own positioning in everyday life.

 

Facilitator:

  • The Summer School will be facilitated by Dr. Robert Hamm. His professional background is in education, sport, and sociology. He is a member of the Patron Body of Sligo School Project, and an organiser of the annual Sligo School Project Symposium. He also curates the Collective Memory-Work (CMW) page, and he has published on the potential of CMW as a method of learning.

For the text of the invitation please check here.

For an overview of the core organisational information, please check here.