From the commemoration of September 11to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, recent decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of new publicmemorials built in both Europe and theUnited States. This volume considers thecontemporary explosion of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices of mourning, memory, and public feeling. Positingmemorials as the physical and visual embodiment of our affective responses to loss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles, balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragic death in order to better comprehend how grief is mediated in contemporary commemorative cultures.

From the commemoration of September 11to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, recent decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of new publicmemorials built in both Europe and theUnited States. This volume considers thecontemporary explosion of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices of mourning, memory, and public feeling. Positingmemorials as the physical and visual embodiment of our affective responses to loss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles, balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragic death in order to better comprehend how grief is mediated in contemporary commemorative cultures.