Historical Studies Seminar

In its research and publishing activities the Institute for the History of the Venetian State and Society has pursued a policy of continuity. This is reflected in its periodical – retitled Studi Veneziani in 1965 – which has appeared in two hefty biannual issues for around twenty years since first published in 1959. Moreover, for around thirty years, usually in mid-May, the Institute has held its traditional seminar involving around twenty scholars who come to discuss their latest studies and what they have grasped or feel they have grasped from their ongoing research, in the belief that exchanging opinions and information is always beneficial. In five half-days in 2010, from 10 to 12 May, the general topic, which will generate sub-themes at five round tables, is The construction of remembrance: public memory, private memory. The starting point and conclusion is the realisation that there can be no society without memory and no state – no mattered how it is structured – that does not express itself in terms of its own commemoration. Whence official, or at least semi-official, chronicles and historiography. At a different level, we find concomitant personal recollections, at times conflicting with the self-images in government or pro-government processes of commemoration. These spontaneous private memoirs recall what is happening or what is thought to be happening or have happened, often highlighting – when the person involved plays a significant role – personal contributions. That is why Guicciardini, to cite one example, can bear the burden (at times painful or very painful in the case of his undoubted joint responsibility for the catastrophe of the Sack of Rome, the outcome of an anti-Imperial policy, which he strongly advocated) of the experience remembered essentially as an admonishing benchmark for his conduct.

Istituto per la Storia della Società
e dello Stato Veneziano
Fondazione Giorgio Cini
tel. +39 041 2710227
e-mail: storia@cini.it