>> Home page >> Activities >> Summer School 1
	Summer School 1   August 11 - August 22, 2004 Summer schools are the core yearly activity of our project. The first summer school took place between August 12 – 22, 2004, in Skofja loka, Slovenia. Our ten day summer school in Škofja Loka surpassed even our notoriously ambitious planning expectations: we wrapped up the programme a day early because we had fulfilled all the planned tasks and more! That gave us an extra day for discussions that went beyond our plan. Out of a group of 30 odd people, participant colleagues, faculty, staff and partners five people were unable to join us. Besa, Iliriana, Maja, Miloš, Tomislav and Slobodan, we missed you! Days 1 and 2. After Irena’s and Hannah’s opening brief recount of the project evolution, presentation of the overall plan and practical announcement, all the participant colleagues and faculty members presented their work, focusing on comparative access to postcolonial and postsocialist realities, concrete outcomes and deadlines, prospects of pedagogical implementation and access to resources. This tour de table extended to the following day and resulted in identification of needs for book purchases. We also grouped what was previously our individual projects into project groups. Day 3. The last presentation, by Maja Muhić, was followed by a brief discussion of themes for purchasing new literature and then we grouped into seven project groups: Trauma and memory, Gender, Discourses of modernity, Public and local administration, community participation and corruption, Space / place, Education, and Law. After lunch, we split into project groups and discussed various types of projects (with concrete outcomes and deadlines) that can emerge from project group cooperation. During the wrap-up session, the project chairs reported on their first meeting and the number of exiting projects that we heard about was incredible! Day 4. The excursion to the Bohinj Lake and the Savica waterfall was marked by some stupendous climbing achievements and moody weather crowned with a double rainbow on the way back to the Škofja Loka. Day 5. The morning of the fifth day was dedicated to the planning of our group’s first major common endeavour: an issue of Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review, due for publication in Fall 2004! In the afternoon we discussed our project themes (institutional aspects of post post-socialist, post-colonial settings, conflict, displacement, chaos, violence, war and re-writing history, imagining the past, and ceremonialism) as we remember and experience them in our everyday lives. This exchange was crucially instrumental for the theoretical conceptualisations that followed on the next day. Dana Howell, our project evaluator, and Sasha Shtokvych, HESP program manager, joined us in the evening. Day 6. The morning session opened with Sari’s report on the evolution of the project since January and gave our guests a concise overview of the project’s structure: seven output-oriented project groups and three overarching thematic study groups for all. The report was followed by a vivid and fruitful exchange on how to conceptualise personal histories in comparative perspective. The afternoon was consecrated to discussions of chosen texts in project groups.   Documents - Project & study groups (pdf, 99kB*) - Minutes (pdf, 285kB*) - Irena's Letter 10 (pdf, 880kB*) - Irena's Letter 9 (pdf, 340kB) - Detailed programme (pdf, 160kB) - Rooming (pdf, 38kB*) Readings - General (pdf, 1,2MB)* - read1 (pdf, 1,6MB)* - read2 (pdf, 1,8MB)* - read3 (pdf, 930kB)* - read4 (pdf, 1,8MB)* - read5 (pdf, 1,4MB)* - read6 (pdf, 1,2MB)* Picture gallery - Summer School 2004 (page 1, 2) Day 7. After the brief morning session consisting of Sari’s presentation of three study groups, designation of faculty members in charge of choosing the study texts, and elaboration of the study plan, we were had a couple of hours off until lunch to prepare the texts. In the afternoon we discussed the seven texts focusing on various identifiable idioms of power. Day 8. The eighth day was entirely devoted to pedagogical transfer. After the initial review of the possibilities that we have to introduce changes in the curricula, the discussion focused on the features of an ideal curriculum and teaching techniques whereby key concepts can be problematised. We finished the afternoon session early because we had to prepare for the gala dinner at restaurant Špajza in Ljubljana. The copious meal in the company of the IES director, Mr. Mitja Žagar, the Ambassador of Germany to Slovenia, Mr. Hans-Jochen Peters and State under-secretary in charge of human rights at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Milena Šmit, was followed by a smoke of real Cuban cigars and – for some at least – a long night in Ljubljana. Day 9. We spent the morning sleeping, reading, walking around town, shopping, etc. The afternoon session was a wrap-up session: we reviewed all the agreed-upon tasks, projects and deadlines, discussed the possibilities to organise teaching tours and collected the first ideas about the organisation of the next summer school. Renouncing the hotel dinner, we went for a pizza in a local pizzeria and after dinner Dan made his traditional champagne speech. Day 10. Project groups met in the morning to finalize their plans and the afternoon was busy with preparations for the dinner at Hannah’s. Corn, spaghetti and wine, peppered with what soon turned into a joke marathon worked magic! Day 11. The majority of our group left early in the morning and the remaining lot continued to read, organize, discuss epistemology, ontology and the rest of it – over a lavish lunch near the Sora River, where we spent the last afternoon tired and sad to part… Summer School 1 location: