Activities 2001 International Conference Claiming History: Aspects of Contemporary Historical Culture 30th November - 2nd December 2001 (Athens, Greece) The past lives a second life beyond the bounds of historical discipline and despite its classification as wholly past. This second life of the past is still unexplored, considered a by-product of its first and "authentic" life, i.e. as something of minor interest for historians. The object of this conference is not to trace the past into the present, but to explore the multiple ways, through which the present is producing, communicating and consuming the past. This history's comeback is not a smooth and peaceful process: the struggle over the past and its meaning takes the form of real as well as symbolic wars, of doing and undoing identities and senses of belonginess. It is remarkable that in the era of globalization in which rapid technological innovation and advances figure as universal values, history returns forcefully as a basic and formative element of society, particularly but not exclusively on the local level (including novel notions of locality such as glocalization). This everyday history making, that is, historical culture itself has not been fully recognized as a valid subject of historical study. It remains on the margins of historical inquiry, being dismissed as "proper" history's distorted image or mere representation. The purpose of this conference was to elaborate and articulate this history embodied in the present, its politics, the contests for power involved, its consequences and effects, as well as its poetics, that is, the devices, images, narratives and cultural forms through which the past is made and remade in the present. Panel and paper topics included (but were not limited to):   - History in the public sphere. The construction of historical culture. History and politics. Historical consciousness and social movements. Religion and identity politics. - Looking for historical landmarks in space. The politics of memory in public monuments. Tourism in history's land. - Keeping history as memory. Preservation and digitization projects. Museums and archives. Historical research within a new supra-national framework. - Embodying history in visual and written representations. Narratives of history in literature, cinema, TV and documentary. - The construction of the right to history. The meanings of oral testimonies and autobiographies. - History and new media. Uses of the past on the Internet. New community and identity models in the digital environments. - The eruption of memory in contemporary politics. The uses of history in the Balkans after 1989. The conference brought together these and other aspects in order to problematize the concept of historical culture and the everyday production of history. Publication "Historein: A Review of the Past & Other Stories" The third volume of Historein is devoted to the theme "European Ego-Histoires: Historiography and the Self, 1970-2000". The contributions are based on lectures given in a seminar of the same title at the European University Institute in 1999-2000. The series was organized by Luisa Passerini and Alexander Geppert who also act as guest-editors of this volume. Volume 3 Return to top