"No scholarly consensus exists about how the terms 'memory' and 'collective memory' may most fruitfully inform historical study. Hence there is still much room for reflection and clarification in this branch of cultural history. How war has been remembered collectively is the central question in thi
...
s volume. War in the twentieth century is a vivid and traumatic phenomenon which has left behind it survivors who engage time and time again in acts of remembrance. Thus this volume, which contains essays by outstanding scholars of twentieth-century history, focuses on the issues raised by the shadow of war in this century. Drawing on material from countries in Europe, and from Israel and the United States, the contributors have adopted a 'social agency' approach which highlights the behaviour, not of whole societies or of ruling groups alone, but of the individuals who do the work of remembrance, who feel they have a duty to remember, and who want to preserve a piece of the past. More specifically, the traumatic collective memory resulting from the horors of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Algerian War is examined through studies of public forms of remembrance, such as museums and exhibitions, literature and film, thus demonstrating that a popular kind of collective memory is still very much alive." (Publisher description)
more
"Video, War and the Diasporic Imagination is an incisive study of the loss and (re) construction of collective and personal identities in ethnic migrant communities. Focusing on the Croatian and Macedonian communities in Western Australia, Dona Kolar-Panov documents the social and cultural changes t
...
hat affected these diasporic groups due to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia. She vividly describes the migrant audience’s daily encounter with the media images of destruction and atrocities committed in Croatia and Bosnia, and charts the implications the continuous viewing of the real and excessive violence had on the awakening of their ethno-national consciousness. The author provides a valuable and unique insight into how migrant cultures are shaped and changed through the reception and assimilation of images seen on video and television screens. Using the combination of close and powerful semiotic analysis of video texts with an informed account of social, political and historical contexts, Kolar-Panov recalls the complex relationships between ethnicity, technology and the reconstruction of identity." (Publisher description)
more