Studies in Collective Memory – serie

After more than two decades of research on collective memory across various disciplines, Breaking down the Silos in Collective Memory Research brings together psychological memory research with the field of memory studies in a systematic way. Astrid Erll and William Hirst have gathered expert authors from across disciplines to present a sustained dialogue between cognitive and cultural memory researchers. The book is arranged according to key fields of memory research, and for quick reference to existent memory research, each chapter is structured in the same way, addressing the typical research questions, methods, and materials of a given approach. The chapters include discussions on familial, national, and transnational memory; memory and emotion; memory narratives; memory and digital media; memory conflicts; memory activism; and future thinking. Concise and accessible, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Memory Studies and intends to "break down the silos" that still exist in research on collective memory today.

Human beings are time travelers. Incessantly, we traverse past, present, and future through a process called collective memory. In Travels in Time, Astrid Erll addresses the question of how collective memory emerges through motion--the movements of people, media, forms, and practices. Grounded in literary, cultural, and media memory studies, this collection of essays undertakes forays into various dimensions of collective memory as traveling memory. It discusses the ways in which families and generations shape and are shaped by the past; how media such as literature, film, and photography make and remake collective memory; or how trauma, flashbulb memories, and implicit memory are interwoven with culture. The essays consider repercussions of recent historical events as well as long-term mnemonic processes, ranging from Greek antiquity to British colonialism in India, and from the First and Second World Wars to migration in Europe, 9/11, and the coronavirus pandemic. Developing a broad perspective on collective memory, this book outlines the horizons of interdisciplinary memory research.

After more than two decades of research on collective memory across various disciplines, Breaking down the Silos in Collective Memory Research brings together psychological memory research with the field of memory studies in a systematic way. Astrid Erll and William Hirst have gathered expert authors from across disciplines to present a sustained dialogue between cognitive and cultural memory researchers. The book is arranged according to key fields of memory research, and for quick reference to existent memory research, each chapter is structured in the same way, addressing the typical research questions, methods, and materials of a given approach. The chapters include discussions on familial, national, and transnational memory; memory and emotion; memory narratives; memory and digital media; memory conflicts; memory activism; and future thinking. Concise and accessible, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Memory Studies and intends to "break down the silos" that still exist in research on collective memory today.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.How are social movements remembered and how does that memory impact later mobilizations? Does the memory of earlier defeats inspire or inhibit civil resistance? How does forgetting figure in these dynamics? In Remembering Hope, Ann Rigney examines the role of storytelling in transferring hope in social transformation from one generation of activists to another. She uses the tools of cultural memory studies to explain how shared narratives about protest are produced using words, images, video, and performance. Referring to a wide range of cultural forms--periodicals, documentaries, archives, photography, but also graffiti and calendars--Rigney argues that storytelling itself intervenes in the present by mobilizing the power of cultural expression to reconnect with the aspirations and energies of predecessors. The changing memory of the Paris Commune is used as a red thread to tie together case studies, ranging from nineteenth-century socialists and anarchists to the Occupy movements of the 2010s and contemporary climate activism, and bring to light both continuities and transformations over time. Rigney's long-term approach shows that cultural memory and activism are deeply entwined across generations, that protest survives in memory even when the streets are emptied, and that culturally mediated stories provide a resource for activists in articulating new agendas. It reveals how cultural memory work has been used as a form of resistance to historical outcomes and as a tool for kick-starting older campaigns in new contexts. Above all, by demonstrating the cultural transmission of hope, it challenges the assumption that grievance rather than active citizenship has always been at the heart of collective memory.

The United States has long resisted reckoning with its past atrocities. In recent years, however, a full-fledged "politics of regret" has finally coalesced to challenge canonical narratives of national innocence and exceptionalism. In The Reverberating Past, Christina Simko chronicles how the politics of regret emerged out of a pervasive trauma culture that supplanted a future-oriented faith in progress. At new sites of racial reckoning, such as the Alabama-based National Memorial for Peace and Justice, designers have fused the language of trauma and terror with a lineage of Black thought that has consistently testified to the enduring presence of the past, including the afterlives of slavery, in the United States. Yet as the politics of regret solidified, a populist nostalgia has also arisen to contest the boundaries of the past, similarly rooted in trauma culture. Instead of mourning the reverberating legacies of violence or vowing to eradicate them, populist nostalgia promises to restore a lost past, often through the very symbols and structures that have perpetuated racial violence and inequality.By exploring the modern legacy of trauma in U.S. memorial sites and museums, The Reverberating Past reveals what is at stake in the tense—and, at times, violent—confrontation between nostalgia and regret, and how representations of the past shape our capacity to imagine alternative futures.