Remembering teachers and headmasters : funeral memories as source in history of education between nation building and collective memory

Studies of school memories have underlined the heuristic value of many new sources which have been underused by education historians until now. This contribution sets out to analyse the forms of public commemorations of school teachers and headmasters, understood as historical sources able to reveal many aspects of school, collective and public memories. Starting from the studies of obituaries of school teachers and officials in Italy, the paper circumscribes the area of investigation to the local case of the city of Bologna (Italy) from the Unity of Italy to the post-Second World War period. Some common aspects emerge over time in relation to the contents and forms of commemoration, but also the peculiarities in relation to the different historical periods and the different ways of remembering female and male school teachers, in a sort of «gender» commemoration.