War And Public Memory

An introduction to key issues in the study of war and memory that examines significant conflicts in twentieth-century Europe In order to understand the history of twentieth-century Europe, we must first appreciate and accept how different societies and cultures remember their national conflicts. We must also be aware of the ways that those memories evolve over time. In War and Public Memory: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Europe, Messenger outlines the relevant history of war and its impact on different European nations, and assesses how and where the memory of these conflicts emerges in political and public discourse and in the public sphere and public spaces of Europe. The case studies presented emphasize the major wars fought on European soil as well as the violence perpetrated against civilian populations. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of the conflict and then proceeds with a study of how memory of that struggle has entered into public consciousness in different national societies. The focus throughout is on collective social, cultural, and public memory, and in particular how memory has emerged in public spaces throughout Europe, such as parks, museums, and memorial sites. Messenger discusses memories of the First World War for both the victors and the vanquished as well as their successor states. Other events discussed include the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent conflicts in the former Soviet Union, the Armenian genocide, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the legacy of the civil war in Spain, Germanys reckoning with its Nazi past, and the memory of occupation and the Holocaust in France and Poland.

This is a masterful volume on remembrance and war in the twentieth century. Jay Winter locates the fascination with the subject of memory within a long-term trajectory that focuses on the Great War. Images, languages, and practices that appeared during and after the two world wars focused on the need to acknowledge the victims of war and shaped the ways in which future conflicts were imagined and remembered. At the core of the "memory boom" is an array of collective meditations on war and the victims of war, Winter says. The book begins by tracing the origins of contemporary interest in memory, then describes practices of remembrance that have linked history and memory, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The author also considers "theaters of memory"-film, television, museums, and war crimes trials in which the past is seen through public representations of memories. The book concludes with reflections on the significance of these practices for the cultural history of the twentieth century as a whole.

War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes which have led to this development, among them the passing of the two World Wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the centre of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the politics of commemoration practices should be understood.

"Monumental Conflicts examines 20th century wars from the First World War to the First Gulf War, each chapter analyzing how public memory has evolved over time. The chapters raise fascinating questions about war and memory: Why are wars remembered as they are? What factors drive changes in public perception? What implications arise from remembering and commemorating a war or particular aspects of a war? What does public memory of a war say about us as a society? The volume is divided into three sections focusing on political evolution, negotiated memories of war, and national pride and covers international wars from Afghanistan to Vietnam and German deserter monuments to Vietnamese war tourism"--

War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes that have led to this development, among them the passing of the two world wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the center of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the politics of commemoration practices should be understood. Commemorating War analyzes a range of forms of remembrance, from public commemorations orchestrated by nation-states to personal testimonies of war survivors; and from cultural memories of war represented in films, plays and novels to investigations of wartime atrocities in courts of human rights. It presents a wide range of international case studies, encompassing lesser-known national histories and wars beyond the well-trodden terrain of Vietnam and the two world wars in Europe. Emerging from this book is an important critique of both "state-centered" approaches to war memory and those that regard commemoration primarily as a human response to loss and grief. Offering a wealth of empirical research material, this book will be important for cultural and oral historians, sociologists, researchers in international relations and human rights, and anybody with an interest in the cultural construction of memory in contemporary society.

What stories do we tell about America’s once-great industries at a time when they are fading from the landscape? Pennsylvania in Public Memory attempts to answer that question, exploring the emergence of a heritage culture of industry and its loss through the lens of its most representative industrial state. Based on news coverage, interviews, and more than two hundred heritage sites, this book traces the narrative themes that shape modern public memory of coal, steel, railroading, lumber, oil, and agriculture, and that collectively tell a story about national as well as local identity in a changing social and economic world.

Chinese leaders once tried to suppress memories of their nation’s brutal experience during World War II. Now they celebrate the “victory”—a key foundation of China’s rising nationalism. For most of its history, the People’s Republic of China discouraged public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization—and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China’s reassessment of the war years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home. China’s Good War begins with the academics who shepherded the once-taboo subject into wider discourse. Encouraged by reforms under Deng Xiaoping, they researched the Guomindang war effort, collaboration with the Japanese, and China’s role in forming the post-1945 global order. But interest in the war would not stay confined to scholarly journals. Today public sites of memory—including museums, movies and television shows, street art, popular writing, and social media—define the war as a founding myth for an ascendant China. Wartime China emerges as victor rather than victim. The shifting story has nurtured a number of new views. One rehabilitates Chiang Kai-shek’s war efforts, minimizing the bloody conflicts between him and Mao and aiming to heal the wounds of the Cultural Revolution. Another narrative positions Beijing as creator and protector of the international order that emerged from the war—an order, China argues, under threat today largely from the United States. China’s radical reassessment of its collective memory of the war has created a new foundation for a people destined to shape the world.

Though we live in a time when memory seems to be losing its hold on communities, memory remains central to personal, communal, and national identities. And although popular and public discourses from speeches to films invite a shared sense of the past, official sites of memory such as memorials, museums, and battlefields embody unique rhetorical principles. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials is a sustained and rigorous consideration of the intersections of memory, place, and rhetoric. From the mnemonic systems inscribed upon ancient architecture to the roadside acci