Witnesses Of Remembrance

A new selection of far-reaching poems from an outstanding literary doyen of our times. Kunwar Narain is widely regarded as one of India’s finest contemporary poets and thinkers, with a universal appeal. Awarded with the Jnanpith, his work bears witness to how the lived and the written coalesce. His poems say more than their words—taking us into and out of the morass of our bizarre worlds, signalling inner disquiets in their solicitudes, waking us up to hope in the interstices between lines, and creating entire worldviews in their collectivity. This is the first book-length translation of the author’s poetry to appear after his passing away in 2017. It has an eclectic, wide-ranging selection of poems from his latest five collections. This bilingual edition is also substantive, with over a hundred poems—translated and introduced by Apurva Narain, who has spent years with his father’s poems. Among the most accomplished translators of Hindi poetry into English today, he brings here a compelling level of precision and evocation that Kunwar Narain’s poems demand—slowly expansive as they are in their visionary insights, tender intimations, austere surfaces and silent remembrances; conversing with their readers and urging them to re-read. and is among the most accomplished translators of Hindi poetry into English today.

An anthology of writings about the Holocaust, topically arranged for study.

"No soldier could ask for a sweeter resting place than on the field of glory where he fell. The land he died to save vies with the one which gave him birth in paying tribute to his memory, and the kindly hands which so often come to spread flowers upon his earthly coverlet express in their gentle task a personal affection." -- General John J. Pershing To remember and honor the memory of the American soldiers who fought and died in foreign wars during the past hundred years, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) was established. Since the agency was founded in 1923, its sole purpose has been to commemorate the soldiers' service and the causes for which their lives were given. The twenty-five overseas cemeteries honoring 139,000 combat dead and the memorials honoring the 60,314 fallen soldiers with no known graves are among the most beautiful and meticulously maintained shrines in the world. In the first comprehensive study of the ABMC, Thomas H. Conner traces how the agency came to be created by Congress in the aftermath of World War I, how the cemeteries and monuments the agency built were designed and their locations chosen, and how the commemorative sites have become important "outposts of remembrance" on foreign soil. War and Remembrance powerfully demonstrates that these monuments -- living sites that embody the role Americans played in the defense of freedom far from their own shores -- assist in understanding the interconnections of memory and history and serve as an inspiration to later generations.

Introduces the history of Jewish holocaust and provides information on planning commemorative programs.

In Transgenerational Remembrance, Jessica Nakamura investigates the role of artistic production in the commemoration and memorialization of the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945) in Japan since 1989. During this time, survivors of Japanese aggression and imperialism, previously silent about their experiences, have sparked contentious public debates about the form and content of war memories. The book opens with an analysis of the performance of space at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine, which continues to promote an anachronistic veneration of the war. After identifying the centrality of performance in long-standing dominant narratives, Transgenerational Remembrance offers close readings of artistic performances that tackle subject matter largely obscured before 1989: the kamikaze pilot, Japanese imperialism, comfort women, the Battle of Okinawa, and Japanese American internment. These case studies range from Hirata Oriza’s play series about Japanese colonial settlers in Korea and Shimada Yoshiko’s durational performance about comfort women to Kondo Aisuke’s videos and gallery installations about Japanese American internment. Working from theoretical frameworks of haunting and ethics, Nakamura develops an analytical lens based on the Noh theater ghost. Noh emphasizes the agency of the ghost and the dialogue between the dead and the living. Integrating her Noh-inflected analysis into ethical and transnational feminist queries, Nakamura shows that performances move remembrance beyond current evidentiary and historiographical debates.

Germany and Japan have taken different ways of dealing with the past of the traumatic events of World War II and their own role. Even after 75 years, the battles for remembrance are not over in both countries. Questions about responsibility, about the educational consequences of history and about possibilities for reconciliation with former enemies are constantly being asked anew and require new answers. The contributions in the book address these questions from a Japanese and German perspective on the basis of empirical and historical research, combining historical, educational, and philosophical approaches and opening up new perspectives for academic research as well as for practical educational work by comparing the cultures of remembrance.