Summer in the Delta: A braided journey through space and time

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by Simona Szakács-Behling The story I’m about to tell is a story in three acts based on my memories of travelling with my grandfather from Bucharest to his native village of CA Rossetti in the Danube Delta during several summers in the early 1990s. I must have been between eight and eleven years old, at a time when I thought that adults are not afraid of anything and they never feel pain – not even when they go to the…

Chocolate and Surveillance: Modern Convergences

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by Robert Imre, Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University, Finland I love sportszelet. Always have. The slightly dry chocolate, with just a hint of rum flavour, and the off-normal rectangular size of 25 grams, always appealed to me, especially as a child. Being different to the chocolates that were around where I grew up in a suburb of Toronto, Canada, made it even more appealing; something unique. My earliest memory of the green label was eating the chocolates after some…

Religious socialization of a new generation in Georgia and Croatia

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In Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1989-1991 marked a watershed. Political monopoly and planned economy were exchanged with political pluralism and capitalist economies. At the same time, from total suppression, or tight control and monitoring, a religious ‘marketplace’ appeared with the rewriting of constitutions and reinstating religious freedom, in which various traditional Churches wanted to strengthen their positions and influence. Religious organizations attained a larger role in public life. There was also a substantial increase in religious…

Glances of performing memories

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text by Camila da Rosa Ribeiro It was a rainy morning - no surprises there as it is October in Helsinki - and I was rushing to get the tram that would drop me at the door of the place where we start the second Reconnect/Recollect workshop day exploring memories of childhood. Our group in Helsinki worked on memories related to materialities. Memories of toys, boots, make up and birthday parties filled the room. I wanted to be there early…

Re/connecting research and teaching: Memory work as pedagogical tool

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In our research project, ‘Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods’, we explore memory stories created in collective biography workshops that tell about experiences of childhood in socialist societies during the Cold War. The project brings into view personal histories with an aim to connect generations and the public across still existing divides. Utilizing the perspectives of our research and turning memory work into a pedagogical tool, we decided to experiment with a course at…

Thinking upon thinking, frame upon frame

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Written by Raluca Țurcanașu How can you write about the Revolution when only now, like a baby, 30 y after that you learn about it? HoW DaRE yoU?? How can you tell it to boomers? How can you tell it to folks double your age who f-the-king lived it Each on his own? How can you approach GenXers, With empathic criticism: „Mum, Dad, why didn’t you tell me more?” “Hey Auntie, how was it like to be a teenager then,…

Imaginary escape during Chilean dictatorship

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I was born in Chile, a country where between 1970 and 1973 there was an elected socialist government. This kind of regime was a novelty because until then, all socialist countries had come to power through violent means and many of them became totalitarian societies controlling their populations’ most intimate practices. It was through such violence that the democratically-elected socialist government of Chile was overthrown. The coup d’état of Tuesday, September 11, 1973 (Chilean 9/11) established a dictatorship led by…

From another planet: Childhood experiences of foreignness in communist Romania

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Written by Mihaela Enache Mihaela has worked in the education field for more than three decades, as a teacher in the early childhood and primary sectors, as well as a lecturer and a professional learning facilitator. At present, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland. Having immigrated to New Zealand in 2001, she found a passion in culture and diversity studies, teacher identity and volunteer work in the community. She is actively involved with the Romanian community…

Un/Doing Collective Biography

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In September and October 2019, our memory workshops ran across 4 sites - Berlin, Riga, Helsinki and Mexico City. We were excited to meet participants in person after getting to know everyone a little bit through online workshops and our online workspace on Slack. Alongside generating memory stories through sharing, discussion and writing, we also incorporated site-specific arts-based experiments and visits to exhibitions and theater. We decided to use collective biography (Davies and Gannon, 2006) as a methodology to produce…