Memory is shared, transmitted and expressed in various and complicated ways and continuously reworked in relation to changing political and cultural needs. Archives are often called “collective memory”? The materials contained in them provide information both on the historical experience in the form of invidual memory and on the historical awareness in the form of collective memory.
What is remembered by a group collectively and what aspects of a community’s past constitute the object of remembering, varies. The third seminar of the KAMERA research project approached the questions from the point of view of archives as sites of memory. The archives are faced with new scientific questions and perspectives. The new areas of history, micro historical research, women’s studies, and oral history research have all deepened our understanding of the past by demonstrating the many innovative ways of formulating new questions on familiar subjects. These areas of research often seek sources outside the official documents produced by the authorities, or in private archived materials.
Helsinki, 14 May 2013, The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, SLS
Program
Professor of Finnish history Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen: Opening
University Archivist and Head of Department Patricia Whatley: Community Memory and the Record: Remembering and Forgetting
Director of Collections Management Division Jaana Kilkki: Politics of Memory – Case South-African Archival Landscape
Doctoral Candidate Petra Hakala and Chief of Archives Mikael Korhonen: Archives, Memory, Oblivion – the Emergence of a Private Archival Institution, commenter Ulla-Maija Peltonen
Doctoral Candidate Andreas McKeough: An Overview of the Origins of First-person Narratives Describing the Finnish Civil War, commenter Liisa Vuonokari
Doctoral Candidate Liisa Vuonokari: Occupied memories – The War Booty Archive in East Karelia 1941 – 1944, commenter Andreas McKeough
Chief of Archives Ulla-Maija Peltonen: Conclusion