Dr. Stanard recently returned to Belgium for a brief research visit. His subject: the colonial era’s effects on Belgium after 1960, the year the Belgian Congo gained its independence. One question guiding his research is the meaning of pro-colonial monuments in Belgium, including one such sculpture dedicated to local colonial “pioneers” that still stands today in Ixelles, a commune of Brussels. Not unlike Confederate monuments in the U.S., these monuments in Belgium have come in for mounting criticism in recent years.
Dr. Stanard also recently published two essays on the historiography of European overseas imperialism, both through international collaborations. The first of these new publications is “‘Il passato (coloniale) non è affatto morto, anzi non è nemmeno passato’: la storia dell’imperialismo, la decolonizzazione e le culture europee dopo il 1945,” a translation of one of Stanard’s recent essays, which was rendered into Italian by Guido Mattia Gallerani. It appeared in a special issue of _Scritture Migranti: Rivista di Scambi Interculturali_ titled “Europa/Europe,” published by Mucchi Editore out of Modena, Italy. Stanard also published “Post-1945 Colonial Historiography and the New Imperial History,” in _The Colonial Past in History Textbooks: Historical and Social Psychological Perspectives_, an edited collection put together by Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse of KU Leuven (Belgium) and Joaquim Pirès Valentim of University of Coimbra (Portugal).
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