Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture

Sara Jones is Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her previous books include Complicity, Censorship and Criticism: Negotiating Space in the GDR Literary Sphere (2011); The Media of Testimony: Remembering the East German Stasi in the Berlin Republic (Palgrave, 2014); and Towards a Collaborative Memory: German Memory Work in a Transnational Context (2022). Roger Woods is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is co-editor of German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century (2010) and author of  Germany’s New Right as Culture and Politics (Palgrave, 2007); Nation ohne Selbtbewußtsein (2001); and The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (Macmillan, 1996).

“Essays in this collection will feature on undergraduate reading lists in Cultural Studies, Modern Languages and History courses … for a long time to come. ... This collection is a fascinating and interesting addition to the literature that needs to be explored and studied by a broad range of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers – anyone, in short, who may need to think critically and creatively about testimony.” (Jaime Ashworth, Historical Dialogues, Justice, and Memory Network, historicaldialogues.org, May 5, 2024)

• 1. Introduction: Testimony in Culture and Cultures of Testimony; Sara Jones and Roger Woods.- Concepts in Testimony.- 2. Bearing Witness as Truth Practice: The Twofold - Discursive and Existential - Character of Telling Truth in Testimony; Sybille Krämer.- 3. Bearing Witness as a Boundary Case: Survivor Testimony, Legal Testimony and Historical Testimony; Sigrid Weigel.- 4. Testimonies in Historiography and Oral History; Achim Saupe and Helen Roche.- 5. Gendered Testimonies at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century; Olga Michael.- 6. Queer Dignity: Intersections of Testimonial Queerness in Theatre, Performance, and the Visual Arts; Isaias Fanlo.- 7. The Cultural Contexts of Testimony: The WEIRDness of Global Cosmopolitan Norms; Sara Jones and Mark A. Wolfgram.- Mediations and Methodologies.- 8. Autobiography as Testimony; Katherine Stone and Roger Woods.- 9. Fictionalisation of Testimony; Carmen-Francesca Banciu, Alexandra Effe, and Melissa Schuh.- 10. Testimony and Film; Mónica Jato.- 11. Filming Interviews with Witnesses to Genocide; Rémy  Besson.- 12. The Sensual Memory of Shoah. The Meaning of Sound, Touch and Taste in the Culture of Testimonies; Éva Kovács.- 13. Digital Testimony and Social Media; Ana Belén Martínez García and Christian Karner.- 14. Distributed Remembering: Virtual Reality Testimonies and Immersive Witnessing; Silke Arnold-de Simine and Eugene Ch’ng.- 15. Digital Archiving and Teaching with German-language Testimony on the Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century – A German and Transnational Perspective; Christina Brüning, Verena Nägel, Sanna Stegmaier.- The Ethics and Practice of Testimony.- 16. Testimony, Memorialisation, and Museums: A Crisis in Holocaust Education?; Claudia Reese and Louise Stafford.- 17. Testimony in Public Commemoration and Education for the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Memorial Day; Rachel Century, Isabel Wollaston, Alex Blake.- 18. Testifying to Genocide: A Creative and Critical Use of Memory and Testimony in Holocaust Education in the UK and Canada; Fransiska Louwagie, Caroline Sharples, Charlotte Schallié, Andrea Web.- 19. Bearing Witness: Testimony and Transitional Justice in the Aftermath of Mass Violence; Stephen Cody and Eric Stover.- 20. Culture Clash: Doing Justice and Bearing Witness in the Testimonial Process at War Crimes Tribunals; Helena Vranov Schoorl, Sara Rubert, Kimi Lynn King, James David Meernik.- 21. The Rhetoric of Witnessing: Political Address, Historical Justice, and Commemoration of Traumatic Events; Bradford Vivian and Stephanie Arel.- 22. Community Education Projects Giving Voice: The Use of Testimony to Facilitate Understanding in Pursuit of Justice and Sustainable Peace in a Society Emerging from Conflict; Jim Keys, Stephen Gargan, Alan McCully.- 23. Testimony on Whose Terms? The Cultural Politics of Forced Migration Testimony; Hari Reed and Rebecca Hayes Laughton.- 24. Perpetrator Testimony; Ute Hirsekorn and Sue Vice.-25. Testimonies of the Self and Others: Sara Jones and Emilie Pine in Dialogue; Sara Jones and Emilie Pine.