Digging Deeper
Declassified Intelligence Archives, Transitional Justice, and Memory Construction: A View from the Humanities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Silvia Tandeciarz
On 12 April 2019, the U.S. government handed over to representatives of the Argentine government over 47,000 pages of declassified U.S. records pertaining to Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983). The ceremony represented the culmination of an effort begun by President Obama following a scheduling faux pas: his planned visit to Argentina in March 2016, on the 40th anniversary of the coup. The resulting effort to improve bilateral relations through declassification diplomacy represented a win primarily for the human rights community that for decades had been seeking information about the fates of the disappeared. The documents released included the most sensitive intelligence records and promised to fill in missing puzzle pieces about the structure of the repression as well as the fates of countless victims; these details would not only prove invaluable for the ongoing human rights trials of accused perpetrators, but for regime survivors and their loved ones, as well as historians and scholars of memory. While the records were declassified and made public through an intelligence community portal (Intelligence.gov), navigating them presents a challenge even for seasoned practitioners. Cognizant of the need to facilitate access and amplify the Argentina Declassification Project’s reach, William & Mary partnered with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. to review, analyze, and organize the documents in searchable data bases. Together, as architects of memory, we have engaged the archive to advance the cause of transitional justice and have become active participants in the construction of our shared Cold War history.
Your Degree Is Useless on The Battlefield, or Is It?: An Incursion into Practical Transference of Theories and Concepts in Humanities Using Transfer of Learning (TOL) to Real Life Situations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mrinal Sohoraye
The worldwide pandemic exposed the vulnerability of education in general. Humanities education has suffered a blow. Apart from going online, the new ‘normal’ called for adoption of a more evidence based practice (EBP) to teaching and learning. It goes without saying that theories in humanities are time and space bound; they are developed according to specific events or life events of the author and/or country in which the theory was elaborated. Students worldwide feel that the concepts described do not relate to their own specificity, especially across continents nor specifically designed for developing countries. This is a serious concern for all syllabi of university programmes. Developing nations cannot devise new programmes of study due to the amount of time and effort required. In addition, local experts are scarce. Nevertheless, due to dynamic socio-political situation, graduates in humanities have a crucial role to play with the different stakeholders. The aim of this study is to assess how students assimilate and adapt their learning to day to day practice with regards to Transfer of Learning (TOL). Results show that students adapt their intervention according to the situation at hand but acknowledge that prior learning of concepts is mandatory for effective EBP. It is thus highly recommended to continuously integrate case studies in the curriculum as a way to bridge the gap between learning and practice.
Lost at Home: A Historical Social Network Analysis of the Italian Community in Post-Independence Lybia, 1943-1970 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maddalena Zaglio
To explain (i) the continuous and productive stay of the Italian community in Libya after independence and (ii) when and how their situation started to deteriorate, leading to their expulsion in 1970, I conduct a historical social network analysis on the Italian community. I assume that either (hypothesis 1) the Italian elite was integrated with the local elite, or (hypothesis 2) the Italian community as a whole was integrated in the Libyan society. For both hypotheses, I assume that the connections within and between the Italian community provided its members with a set of possibilities and constraints, hence a certain degree of power, which may have impacted the possibility to preserve and promote their interests, thus to stay in Libya after independence. To test hypothesis 1, I reconstruct the egocentric networks of the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, Camillo Facchinetti (1936-1950) and that of his successor, Vitale Bertoli (1950-1967), by studying their private correspondence, both on a quantitative (Python and Gephi) and qualitative level -to which I add complementary qualitative sources. To test hypothesis 2, I conduct a network analysis on the Italian community as a whole, extracting the quantitative data from the community’s parish registers. Subsequently, I produce a “network prosopography”, based on Italians’ oral and material recollections. A first exploration of Mons. Facchinetti’s private correspondence confirms the validity of my first hypothesis: Facchinetti's social network was crucial for the recovery of the Italian community in Libya after WW2 and for the Italian clergy to be spared from concentration camps.
