Project title
Educational Role of Memorial Museums in Critical Thinking and Learning about the Violent Past
Project description
The moral imperative of “Never again” has been extensively utilized in public discourse following numerous instances of violent conflicts and political violence in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, despite its frequent use, new forms of conflicts and violence continue to persist across the world. In contemporary times, museums and memorials have become key sites for institutionalizing the “never again” assertion within public spaces.
But in what way does violence belong in museums, with which means and to what ends? Do representations of war and violence in museums trivialize and aestheticize war, transforming violence and trauma into attractions? Or do they use educational initiatives to explain violence and to make it possible to come to terms with it? In order to understand educational potential of memorial museums, Tamara Banjeglav explores how memorial museums teach about violence and how violence is represented in museum exhibitions.
Selected publications
Banjeglav, Tamara (2021). “The Alphabet wars. Language, memory and national identity in contemporary debates over minority rights in Croatia”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 23(5). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2021.1935075
Banjeglav, Tamara and Nicolas Moll (2021). “Outbreak of war memories? Historical analogies of the 1990s wars in discourses about the coronavirus pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia”, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 21(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2021.1942656
Banjeglav, Tamara (2019). Exhibiting Memories of a Besieged City. The (Uncertain) Role of
Museums in Constructing Public Memory of the 1992–1995 Siege of Sarajevo, Südosteuropa 67(1): 1-23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2019-0001