From Memory To History

Our understanding of history is often mediated by popular culture, and television series set in the past have provided some of our most indelible images of previous times. Yet such historical television programs always reveal just as much about the era in which they are produced as the era in which they are set; there are few more quintessentially late-90s shows than That ‘70s Show, for example. From Memory to History takes readers on a journey through over fifty years of historical dramas and sitcoms that were set in earlier decades of the twentieth century. Along the way, it explores how comedies like M*A*S*H and Hogan’s Heroes offered veiled commentary on the Vietnam War, how dramas ranging like Mad Men echoed current economic concerns, and how The Americans and Halt and Catch Fire used the Cold War and the rise of the internet to reflect upon the present day. Cultural critic Jim Cullen is lively, informative, and incisive, and this book will help readers look at past times, present times, and prime time in a new light.

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative. Memory, History, Forgetting, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events. . . . It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—Library Journal “Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— New York Times Book Review

History, Memory and Public Life introduces readers to key themes in the study of historical memory and its significance by considering the role of historical expertise and understanding in contemporary public reflection on the past. Divided into two parts, the book addresses both the theoretical and applied aspects of historical memory studies. ‘Approaches to history and memory‘ introduces key methodological and theoretical issues within the field, such as postcolonialism, sites of memory, myths of national origins, and questions raised by memorialisation and museum presentation. ‘Difficult pasts‘ looks at history and memory in practice through a range of case studies on contested, complex or traumatic memories, including the Northern Ireland Troubles, post-apartheid South Africa and the Holocaust. Examining the intersection between history and memory from a wide range of perspectives, and supported by guidance on further reading and online resources, this book is ideal for students of history as well as those working within the broad interdisciplinary field of memory studies.

This collection of original essays represents some of the most exciting ways in which historians are beginning to paint the 1960s onto the larger canvas of American history. While the first literature about this turbulent period was written largely by participants, many of the contributors to this volume are young scholars who came of age intellectually in the 1970s and 1980s and thus write from fresh perspectives. The essayists ask fundamental questions about how much America really changed in the 1960s and why certain changes took place. In separate chapters, they explore how the great issues of the decade--the war in Vietnam, race relations, youth culture, the status of women, the public role of private enterprise--were shaped by evolutions in the nature of cultural authority and political legitimacy. They argue that the whirlwind of events and problems we call the Sixties can only be understood in the context of the larger history of post-World War II America. Contents "Growth Liberalism in the Sixties: Great Societies at Home and Grand Designs Abroad," by Robert M. Collins "The American State and the Vietnam War: A Genealogy of Power," by Mary Sheila McMahon "And That's the Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News," by Chester J. Pach, Jr. "Race, Ethnicity, and the Evolution of Political Legitimacy," by David R. Colburn and George E. Pozzetta "Nothing Distant about It: Women's Liberation and Sixties Radicalism," by Alice Echols "The New American Revolution: The Movement and Business," by Terry H. Anderson "Who'll Stop the Rain?: Youth Culture, Rock 'n' Roll, and Social Crises," by George Lipsitz "Sexual Revolution(s)," by Beth Bailey "The Politics of Civility," by Kenneth Cmiel "The Silent Majority and Talk about Revolution," by David Farber

This book examines the interfaces of memory theory and oral history, which is based on human recollection. Essays examine the importance of memory and its reliability. Scholars from two fields, cognitive psychology and oral history, examine the ways in which human experience is recalled and interpreted. The papers were first presented in 1988 at an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Baylor University Institute for Oral History. Contents: Foreword, Donald A. Ritchie; Introduction; Believe It or Not: Rethinking the Historical Interpretation of Memory, Paul Thompson, Comment by Glenace E. Edwall; Tricked by Memory, Elizabeth F. Loftus, Comment by Eva M. McMahan; American History and the Structures of Collective Memory: A Modest Exercise in Empirical Iconography, Michael H. Frisch, Comment by Kenneth Foote; Dialogue I: Sally Browder, Michael H. Frisch, ELizabeth Loftus, Paul Thompson; Phoenix and Chimera: The Changing Faces of Memory, Marigold Linton, Comment by Kim Lacy Rogers; What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly, Karen E. Fields, Comment by Alpine W. Jefferson; Reliability and Validity in Oral History: The Case for Memory, Alice M. Hoffman and Howard S. Hoffman, Comment by Terry Anderson, Comment by Brent Slife; Dialogue II: Karen E. Feilds, Alice M. Hoffman, Howard S. Hoffman, Marigold Linton, Paul Thompson, Donald Ritchie; Afterword, Lewis M. Barker. Co-published with the Institute for Oral History.

How does the historian approach memory and how do historians use different sources to analyze how history and memory interact and impact on each other? Memory and History explores the different aspects of the study of this field. Taking examples from Europe, Australia, the USA and Japan and treating periods beyond living memory as well as the recent past, the volume highlights the contours of the current vogue for memory among historians while demonstrating the diversity and imagination of the field. Each chapter looks at a set of key historical and historiographical questions through research-based case studies: How does engaging with memory as either source or subject help to illuminate the past? What are the theoretical, ethical and/or methodological challenges that are encountered by historians engaging with memory in this way, and how might they be managed? How can the reading of a particular set of sources illuminate both of these questions? The chapters cover a diverse range of approaches and subjects including oral history, memorialization and commemoration, visual cultures and photography, autobiographical fiction, material culture, ethnic relations, the individual and collective memories of war veterans. The chapters collectively address a wide range of primary source material beyond oral testimony – photography, monuments, memoir and autobiographical writing, fiction, art and woodcuttings, ‘everyday’ and ‘exotic’ cultural artefacts, journalism, political polemic, the law and witness testimony. This book will be essential reading for students of history and memory, providing an accessible guide to the historical study of memory through a focus on varied source materials.

In recent years, "memory" has become a central and controversial concept in historical studies. It is a term that denotes a new and distinctive field of study and a fresh way of conceptualizing history as a more general field of inquiry. This book provides historians with an accessible and stimulating introduction to debates and theories about memory and approaches to the study of it in history and other disciplines. The book explores the relationships between the individual and the collective, between memory as survival and memory as reconstruction, between remembering as a subjective experience and as a social or cultural practice, and between memory and history as modes of retrospective knowledge.

History, Memory, Performance is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring performances of the past in a wide range of trans-national and historical contexts. At its core are contributions from theatre scholars and public historians discussing how historical meaning is shaped through performance.