Cultures Of Memory In The Nineteenth Century

This collection provides a long-overdue examination of the nineteenth century as a crucible of new commemorative practices. Distinctive memory cultures emerged during this period which would fundamentally reshape public and private practices of remembrance in the modern world. The essays in this volume bring together scholars of History, Literature, Art History, and Musicology to explore uses of memory in nineteenth-century empire-building and constructions of national identity, cultures of sentiment and mourning practices, and discourses of race and power. Contributors approach the topic through case studies of Europe, the United States, and the British Empire. Their analyses of nineteenth-century innovations in commemoration at both the personal and the larger civic and political levels will appeal to students and scholars of memory and of the nineteenth-century world.

"A Cultural History of Memory in the Nineteenth Century comprises scholarly inquiry into representations of memory and historical cultures during the 'long nineteenth century'. In the era that invented photography, revised the history of the earth, and saw innovative communication and transportation technologies transform the experience of time and distance, both personal and collective memories were translated into new forms of expression. Material cultures of memory produced relics and souvenirs within institutions such as museums and archives dedicated to preservation, while commemorative practices expanded within both the private sphere and the growing public sphere, generating monuments and memorials while erasing other stories about the meaning of the past. Innovative writers and thinkers creatively engaged 'memory' in ways which continue to shape psychology, history and literature today. In this volume, thematic chapters survey representations of memory in power and politics; remembering and forgetting; time and space; media and technology; knowledge, science and education; high culture and popular culture; philosophy, religion and history; and rituals and faith practices in everyday life"--

This collection provides a long-overdue examination of the nineteenth century as a crucible of new commemorative practices. Distinctive memory cultures emerged during this period which would fundamentally reshape public and private practices of remembrance in the modern world. The essays in this volume bring together scholars of History, Literature, Art History, and Musicology to explore uses of memory in nineteenth-century empire-building and constructions of national identity, cultures of sentiment and mourning practices, and discourses of race and power. Contributors approach the topic through case studies of Europe, the United States, and the British Empire. Their analyses of nineteenth-century innovations in commemoration at both the personal and the larger civic and political levels will appeal to students and scholars of memory and of the nineteenth-century world.

This volume addresses the complex relationship between memory, culture, and gender--as well as the representation of women in national memory--in several European countries. An international group of contributors explore the national allegories of memory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the relationship between violence and war in the recollections of both families and the state, and the methodological approaches that can be used to study a gendered culture of memory.

Memory and memory studies have shaped a major site of humanities research over the last twenty years. Examined by ethnographers, archaeologists, social scientists, historians, economists, archivists, art historians, and literary scholars, the theme of memory – individual memory and memoir, collective memory, official memory and oral memory, cultural memory and popular memory – has informed academic discourse and formed institutional structures. Yet, the matter of memory is, paradoxically, under-explored in studies of the ‘long nineteenth century’ in France. Mapping Memory in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture focuses critical attention on that neglected century when France was struggling to negotiate the serially renewed memory of revolutionary turmoil and socio-cultural redefinition. This volume explores the spaces that the memory process claims and shapes, and it works to identify the crosscurrents that connect those spaces. It asks how memory resists – or cedes to – colonisations by authority, by official discourse, by history, and by aesthetics. It asks how memory-work coincides with or morphs into the processes of the imagination. Eschewing diachronic approaches, the contributors to this volume explore sites around which memory is concentrated or which it shapes and informs: Memory on the Street; Sites of National Memory; Metamorphoses: Memory and Literary Practice; and Memory’s Imaginary Spaces.

In recent years memory has attracted increasing attention. From analyses of electronic communication and the Internet to discussions of heritage culture, to debates about victimhood and sexual abuse, memory is currently generating much cultural interest. This interdisciplinary collection takes a journey through memory in order to contextualize this current "memory boom." Memory Cultures focuses on memories "outside"--in the many fields within which understandings of memory have been produced. It focuses less on memory as an object whose inner workings are to be studied, and more on memory as a concept. It traces the genealogies of our contemporary Western understandings of memory through studies of the early modern arts of memory. It also discusses nineteenth-century evolutionary museums, and the modernist explorations of artists and writers. Here it explores the differences between Western and non-Western concepts of the lived past and compares understandings of memory in history, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume is divided into five parts: "Believing the Body"; "Propping the Subject"; "What Memory Forgets: Models of the Mind"; "What History Forgets: Memory and Time"; and "Memory Beyond the Modern." Individual essays by many of the foremost international scholars in memory studies trace memory's intimate association with identity and recognition, with cities, with lived time, with the science of the mind, with fantasy and with the media. Memory Cultures will be of essential interest to those working in the fields of cultural studies, history and also anthropology. Susannah Radstone and Katharine Hodgkin teach in the School of Cultural and Innovation Studies at the University of East London.