Today, culture of memory is a catch-word used to characterise many debates around the regional, national, or European public memory. Broad national publication projects such as Lieux de mémoire (Pierre Nora) or German places of memory (by Etienne Francois / Hagen Schulze) show the academic efforts concerning the respective national memory. From a historical point of view the development of cultures of memory in Europe is characterised by some specific traits:

Public tradition-building and culture of memory are historically closely linked to the development of nation states and the shaping of national identities during the 19th century. The national cultures of memory formed in the 19th century are, comparable to the development of democratic participation characterised by either the late inclusion of women or the relatively weak presence of women; female scopes of action, experience and memory are not or only insufficiently represented in the respective national sites of memory. In contrast, achievements by women mostly do not seem to be worth remembering or are understood as areas far away from politics and are left to the micro-spatial cultures of memory. Many historiographic concepts of research into cultures of memory developed by now, do not break up the prevalent patterns of national priority-setting and the dominance of a male culture of memory. On the theoretical and reflective level they rather perpetuate the historical development of a culture of memory which is primarily oriented at the nation-state as well as male scopes of action. Thus they (indirectly) contribute to the stabilisation of these patterns.

This is the starting point of the planned workshop and we want to discuss the following questions:

• If the connotation of national cultures of memory with “male” is to be broken up – in which way a consistent “gendering” of culture of memory and sites of memory is to be done?
• If gender is an important category for the interpretation of social systems of relations and a pivotal argument for the establishment, justification, and reinforcement of power structures – how and which kind of symbolic, normative, and social-historical references of sites and cultures of memory have to be analysed gender-specifically?
• What are the trans-national results researching gender-specific contents of traditional sites of memory and the related (national) symbols, values, concepts of power and history as well as the images of femininity and masculinity?
• Which kind of European memory do we construct burying cultural heritage of women and incorporating the results into the culture(s) of memory?

The workshop aims to include historical and related research from various European countries and we try to get funding for travel expenses and accommodation for participants, who will not be able to get funding for the travel and/or hotel by their institutions.

Abstracts for proposed papers should be sent before 15th of October 2004 to: