Barbara Törnquist-Plewa – författare

Scholars have devoted considerable energy to understanding the history of ethnic cleansing in Europe, reconstructing specific events, state policies, and the lived experiences of victims. Yet much less attention has been given to how these incidents persist in collective memory today. This volume brings together interdisciplinary case studies conducted in Central and Eastern European cities, exploring how present-day inhabitants “remember” past instances of ethnic cleansing, and how they understand the cultural heritage of groups that vanished in their wake. Together these contributions offer insights into more universal questions of collective memory and the formation of national identity.

The world wars, genocides and extremist ideologies of the 20th century are remembered very differently across Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, resulting sometimes in fierce memory disputes. This book investigates the complexity and contention of the layers of memory of the troubled 20th century in the region. Written by an international group of scholars from a diversity of disciplines, the chapters approach memory disputes in methodologically innovative ways, studying representations and negotiations of disputed pasts in different media, including monuments, museum exhibitions, individual and political discourse and electronic social media. Analyzing memory disputes in various local, national and transnational contexts, the chapters demonstrate the political power and social impact of painful and disputed memories. The book brings new insights into current memory disputes in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. It contributes to the understanding of processes of memory transmission and negotiation across borders and cultures in Europe, emphasizing the interconnectedness of memory with emotions, mediation and politics.

The world wars, genocides and extremist ideologies of the 20th century are remembered very differently across Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, resulting sometimes in fierce memory disputes. This book investigates the complexity and contention of the layers of memory of the troubled 20th century in the region. Written by an international group of scholars from a diversity of disciplines, the chapters approach memory disputes in methodologically innovative ways, studying representations and negotiations of disputed pasts in different media, including monuments, museum exhibitions, individual and political discourse and electronic social media. Analyzing memory disputes in various local, national and transnational contexts, the chapters demonstrate the political power and social impact of painful and disputed memories. The book brings new insights into current memory disputes in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. It contributes to the understanding of processes of memory transmission and negotiation across borders and cultures in Europe, emphasizing the interconnectedness of memory with emotions, mediation and politics.

The attraction of crises keeps going an entire sector of the media industry. Authors, painters, photographers and directors tell fascinating stories about the decline of empires and democracies as much as earthquakes and infectious diseases. Hereby, catastrophe and collapse evolve as a complex construct of experience, interpretation and emotion. The resulting narrative combines analyses of facts about the collapse with a retrospect evaluation, update and confirmation of these facts in the cultural memory of a given society. The random occurrence becomes a memorable event. The contributors of this volume have taken a narratological approach in examining collapse, disaster, catastrophe and how these in turn manifest themselves across different types of media. Die Anziehungskraft der „Krise“ stimuliert Kultur- und Medienschaffende gleichermaßen. Inspiriert erzählen sie fesselnde Geschichten vom Zusammenbruch von Imperien und Demokratien ebenso wie von Erdbeben und Epidemien. In diesen entwickeln sich Katastrophe und Untergang als komplexe Konstrukte aus Erfahrungen, Interpretationen und Emotionen. Sie vereinen die Analyse von Fakten über eine Katastrophe mit der Aktualisierung von Erfahrungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses im Umgang mit Katastrophen. Hierbei wird der beliebige Vorfall zum erinnerbaren Ereignis. Die Autoren dieses Bandes untersuchen aus narratologischer Perspektive Untergang, Desaster, Katastrophe und wie sie mittels verschiedener Medien erzählt werden. Herausgeber / Editors: Alexander Drost (University of Greifswald), Volha Olga Sasunkevich (University of Gothenburg), Joachim Schiedermair (University of Greifswald), Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (Lund University). Beiträger / Contributor: Dr. Uta Bretschneider (Kloster Veßra); Elizabeth Oxfeldt (University of Oslo); Philipp Wagner (Universität Wien); Florian Peters (Institut für Zeitgeschichte München – Berlin, Abt. Berlin); Mariëlle Wijermars (University of Helsinki); Valur Ingimundarson (University of Iceland); Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir (Háskóli Íslands); Franziska Sajdak (Universität Greifswald)

This volume is a collection of thirty papers written by authors from around the world. The writers focus on topics related to their own research interests. As a result, readers obtain a worldwide perspective on World War II from academics working on nearly every continent, proving that World War II was, probably, the first ever truly global experience for humanity. Present are many and different perspectives on the war. Eighty years after the end of World War II, these academics share their knowledge and reflections about a gruesome, but still not very remote time. In the new millennium, their studies should remind readers that the ‘end of history’ has been an impossible illusion and warn that peace and stability in international relations are not a given.

The book studies how multiple representations of the Other are constructed, Europeanized and used in Poland and Sweden in various heritage related contexts (museums, cities, war cemeteries, commemoration sites etc.) in the second decade of the 21st century. In a more general sense, the authors raise the question of how otherness (in terms of culture, ethnicity, class, gender, etc.) is constructed and leads to its social inclusion, domestication, marginalization or – increasingly common in Scandinavian and Central European peripheries – exclusion.

Balkan är ett gränsland där väst möter öst och den kristna världen möter det muslimska. I århundraden har olika religiösa och språkliga grupper existerat sida vid sida – först under 1800-talet började motsättningarna användas för att nå politiska mål, något som är lika aktuellt idag.Orsakerna till de många konflikterna har ofta sökts i de kulturella och etniska olikheterna inom området. Författarna till The Balkans in Focus är dock eniga om att sådana tolkningar är alldeles för enkla och i många fall resultatet av stereotypa tankemönster.Antologin är resultatet av ett tvärvetenskapligt projekt där forskare bildat ett nätverk som studerar den kulturella och politiska utvecklingen i före detta Jugoslavien. De medverkande forskarna kommer från Skandinavien, Tyskland och Bosnien-Herzegovina, Kroatien, Serbien och Slovenien.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain the countries in Central and Eastern Europe has undergone profound transformations. However, in most research on these changes the cultural dimension of transition has been neglected. The analyses have focused on ‘hard’, institutional factors such as legal coordination and economic readjustments, and less attention has been paid to complex dimensions such as lifestyles, habitus, value markers in relation to identity. In Cultural Transformations after Communism a group of experts aim to repair this deficiency, and present case studies from all of the former Communist countries that now are members of the EU. The researchers attempt to answer crucial questions about the constructions of a new identity in the region: Have the processes of democratization and opening the borders produced mentality changes and new value systems? Is there a convergence of values and cultures between the new and old EU-members? The authors address themselves to students and researchers, and the book is valuable reading for anyone with an interest in European integration, issues of national identity, and the politics and culture in the post-Communist countries.