Politics of Cultural Memory (Hardback) | Released: 11 Nov 2010

This edited collection explores the political dimensions of cultural memory work in its varied forms of representation, from public monuments to literary texts. Addressing the different ways that cultural texts represent the past in the present, the collection demonstrates that cultural memory is something actively made: the site of a struggle over meanings that can serve a range of political and cultural purposes. The collection offers essays that discuss the politics of cultural memory both in theory and in practice, and features work by some of the leading scholars in the field including Susannah Radstone, Graham Dawson, Felicity Collins and Therese Davis. Contributors explore the ways in which memory comes to be articulated through particular cultural practices, from film and photography to literature and public monuments, all of which have their own codes and conventions, modes of address and audiences. As such this volume brings together scholars working in a range of disciplines (literary studies, history, art history, film studies) and in so doing seeks to establish a dialogue between different disciplines and methodologies and to explore cultural memory work in a range of different intellectual fields, cultural forms and political and historical contexts, for instance, the Holocaust, Northern Ireland, Australia, Palestine, and the former Soviet Bloc. The collection will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars working in the area of cultural memory studies, for whom it will represent an invaluable collection of current work in the field. It will also interest scholars working in the particular areas with which it engages, for instance, postcolonial studies, Holocaust studies, Eastern European Studies, Irish Studies, Art History and English Studies.
About the Author: Lucy Burke is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her current research focuses upon the political and ethical questions that are raised by fictional and biographical accounts of Alzheimer's disease and the ways in which writers perceive the impact of dementia upon selfhood and cultural identity. Recent publications consider Alzheimer's life writing and biosociality, poetics and dementia, and representations of cognitive difference. Simon Faulkner teaches the history of art and visual culture at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the editor (with Anandi Ramamurthy) of Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain (2006). He has published on mid-twentieth century British art, including articles on John Minton, David Hockney, and R. B. Kitaj, as well as on contemporary artists such as Angus Boulton, David Reeb, and Roi Kuper. He is currently engaged in a long term research project on visual culture and the Israeli occupation. Jim Aulich is a research professor in the Faculty of Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research engages with the relationships between history, memory and representation, especially in the field of propaganda and publicity in the graphic arts. He is an active member of the Location, Memory and the Visual research Group and the director of the ARHC funded Resource Enhancement project 'Posters of Conflict: the visual culture of public information and counter information 1914-2005, ' a collaboration with the Imperial War Museum. Contributors Include: Eleanor Chiari, Therese Davis, Graham Dawson, Robert Foster, Claudette Lauzon, Noam Leshem, Joel McKim, Amanda Nettelbeck, Louise Purbrick, Susannah Radstone, Katie Rickard, Darien Jane Rozentals, Garry Tregidga and Felicity Collins