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Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde
LXVII/ 116, 2013, Heft 3+ 4
Challenging Memories: Silence and Empathy in HeritageInterpretation, Buckfast Abbey, UK, 17th- 19th July 2013
A British Arts and Humanities Research Council network funded in2012-13," Silence, Memory and Empathy in Museums and at HistoricSites", held an international conference at Buckfast Abbey in Devonfrom 17-19 July 2013. The network brought together academics, doc-toral students, museum curators and educators from the United King-dom to explore interdisciplinary approaches to silence and empathy inheritage. The concluding conference aimed to foster dialogue and col-laboration on a larger international stage with delegates coming fromAustralia, the Czech Republic, Spain, the United States as well as theUnited Kingdom.
The conference programme, which ran over two days, includedtwelve panels with 24 papers, keynote addresses by Jay Winter( YaleUniversity) and Elizabeth Bonshek( University of Canberra), prac-titioner- led workshops and tours of historic sites in and around theBenedictine monastery at Buckfast Abbey. The introductory remarksby Abbott Rev. David Charlesworth OSB on the Benedictine rule oflistening to silence framed the conference proceedings. Professor Win-ter's opening keynote address suggested four possible frames throughwhich to think about silence. He addressed liturgical, political, essen-tialist and familial silences, drawing on examples from his 40- yearcareer as a historian of the First World War.
The global centenary of the First World War was a focus of:manyof the papers at the conference, in particular, the role of museums inrepresenting the memories of war. This focus was due to the participa-tion in the network of the British Imperial Museum as well as Winter'sown involvement with the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne,France, a museum and research centre of the First World War.² Whilethe original purpose of war museums was to be monuments to thedead sites of mourning as well as memory there has been a shiftover the past 40 years towards interpretation for and engagement withpacifist audiences. This shift has tended to privilege eyewitness testi-
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1
http://silencememoryempathy.wordpress.com/
2 http://en.historial.org/