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Abstract

These notes have their origin in the conceptualization of a conference and research project centred on the mid-20th-century prison camp at Fossoli, outside the town of Carpi (Romagna, central Italy), a camp which was in operation in various forms and periods from the 1940s to the 1970s. The foundation responsible for the maintenance and valorization of Fossoli and other memorial sites linked to it in and near Capri, include the remarkable museum / monument to the deported in the town centre (BBPR, 1973), wanted to launch a series of research initiatives led by its academic advisory board (Comitato scientifico), which would re-establish and re-invigorate the importance of Fossoli in the town, the region, in Italy and in Europe, inserting the history and site of Fossoli into a wider debate and discourse, supporting high-level historical research but looking also for impact and resonance in the present day. The board’s discussions centred, then, on a key question: what does it mean today to propose Fossoli as a site of remembrance and of research; how does Fossoli fit the archive and the map of the contemporary?