Summer School – “Discomforting Objects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to investigate and exhibit Contested Pasts”

This Tübingen-Durham International Postgraduate Summer School focuses on material artefacts as socio-cultural “triggers”. It aims to enhance research on the dynamics of discomforting pasts and narratives and the difficulties of putting discomforting objects on display.

Discomforting objects materialize societal conflicts and therefore initiate debates in the fields of research and public policy. Discomforting pasts are unavoidable, regardless of how much societies seek to suppress, ignore or forget them. The legacies of colonialism and the National Socialist regime, as well as more recent histories of terrorism, division, persecution, and migration, trouble national narratives and self-understandings. The discomforting pasts, which societies and museums must come to terms with, are as complex as the range of discomforting objects in which these pasts are embodied.

During this summer school, we will examine Discomforting Objects using interdisciplinary approaches:

• Literature Approach (Jonathan Long and Julie Biddlecombe-Brown, Durham)
• Anthropological Approach (Thomas Thiemeyer and Jan Hinrichsen, Tübingen)
• Archaeological Approach (Robin Skeates and Julie Biddlecombe-Brown, Durham)
• Keynote Lecture by Mark Sealy (Director of Autograph ABP, Association of Black Photographers)

The Summer School will close with a presentation of participants research objects in a mini exhibition. Full programme can be downloaded here: International Summer School programme.