Borderlands of Memory

The complex intertwining of history, memory, space, place and identity in borderlands is the topic of this edited collection. Using a transnational analysis of multi-layered cases from the northern Adriatic and Central Europe, the essays address fundamental questions in the history of the twentieth century. The geographical areas under scrutiny have experienced regular re-drawings of political borders, reconfigurations of state orders, and changes in ideological frameworks. The symbolic boundaries that formed the mental map of the modern world were located here: West vs East, Latin vs German vs Slavic, European vs Oriental, antifascism vs fascism, capitalism vs communism, etc. These symbolic dimensions influence the local reality, intersecting with international developments and global processes. How these changes in ideology, state and the resulting spatial politics have functioned within varying historical frameworks, and what we can learn from their changing meanings, is the main focus of this volume. Its content represents a privileged perspective on understanding ruptures as well as continuities in memory cultures, commemorative practices, situational identifications and the varying politics of the past in European borderlands.

Borut Klabjan is Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and Senior Research Fellow at the Science and Research Centre in Koper. He graduated from the University of Trieste and received his PhD from the University of Ljubljana. In 2011 he was Humboldt Fellow at the Institute for South-East Europe at the Humboldt University in Berlin and in 2014 at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. His work addresses themes of political, diplomatic and cultural history, memory, border and minority issues in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe.