This handbook represents the interdisciplinary and international field of “cultural memory studies” for the first time in one volume. Articles by renowned international scholars offer readers a unique overview of the key concepts of cultural memory studies. The handbook not only documents current research in an unprecedented way; it also serves as a forum for bringing together approaches from areas as varied as sociology, political sciences, history, theology, literary studies, media studies, philosophy, psychology, and neurosciences. “Cultural memory studies” – as defined in this handbook – came into being at the beginning of the 20th century, with the works of Maurice Halbwachs on mémoire collective. In the course of the last two decades this area of research has witnessed a veritable boom in various countries and disciplines. As a consequence, the study of the relation of “culture” and “memory” has diversified into a wide range of approaches. This handbook is based on a broad understanding of “cultural memory” as the interplay of present and past in sociocultural contexts. It presents concepts for the study of individual remembering in a social context, group and family memory, national memory, the various media of memory, and finally the host of emerging transnational lieux de mémoire such as 9/11.
Author(s): Astrid Erll (editor), Ansgar Nünning (editor)
Series: (Media and Cultural Memory)
Publisher: De Gruyter
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 449
Tags: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Memory Studies
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction
I. Lieux de mémoire— Sites of Memory
Loci memoriae—Lieux de mémoire
Italian luoghi della memoria
Mitteleuropa as a lieu de mémoire
Sites of Memory in U.S.-American Histories and Cultures
Sites of Memory and the Shadow of War
II. Memory and Cultural History
Memory and the History of Mentalities
The Invention of Cultural Memory
Canon and Archive
Communicative and Cultural Memory
Generation/Generationality, Generativity, and Memory
Cultural Memory: A European Perspective
III. Social, Political, and Philosophical Memory Studies
Maurice Halbwachs's mémoire collective
From Collective Memory to the Sociology of Mnemonic Practices and Products
Memory in Post-Authoritarian Societies
Memory and Politics
Social Forgetting: A Systems-Theory Approach
Memory and Remembrance: A Constructivist Approach
Memory and Forgetting in Paul Ricoeur's Theory ofthe Capable Self
IV. Psychological Memory Studies
Psychology, Narrative, and Cultural Memory: Past and Present
Against the Concept of Cultural Trauma
Experience and Memory: Imaginary Futures in the Past
A Cognitive Taxonomy of Collective Memories
Language and Memory: Social and Cognitive Processes
Cultural Memory and the Neurosciences
Communicative Memory
V. Literature and Cultural Memory
Mnemonic and Intertextual Aspects of Literature
Cultural Memory and the Literary Canon
Life-Writing, Cultural Memory, and Literary Studies
The Literary Representation of Memory
The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts Between Monumentality and Morphing
VI. Media and Cultural Memory
The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History
The Photograph as Externalization and Trace
Journalism's Memory Work
Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory
Memory and Media Cultures
Index of Names
Index of Terms
Notes on Contributors
