Memory Studies and the Politics of Memory

The memory studies research cluster is made up of faculty staff, postdoctoral research fellows and postgraduate students working on cultural, political and transnational aspects of memory studies that span several continents, from the eighteenth century to the present day, often from an interdisciplinary perspective. Focal points include literary, cultural, comparative, gender and postcolonial studies, as well as film and media studies, critical theory, history, art history, politics, linguistics, English studies and psychology.

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Memory and Postcolonial Studies Symposium, 10 Jun 2016

Overview

The Memory Studies research cluster, which is based in the Department of German Studies, has developed in recent years to become a significant faculty-wide group at Nottingham, as well as doing collaborative research with regional partners. It cooperates closely with colleagues at Nottingham Trent University and the University of Birmingham’s Memory Group. Many members are also part of the CAS (Centre for Advanced Studies) remembrance group. The cluster’s activities bring together researchers working on national and transnational aspects of memory, such as: European Fascisms and the Holocaust; the legacy of World War II in Europe and Japan; the Soviet Union; the former Yugoslavia; Post-Soviet Russia; (the demise of) the German Democratic Republic; colonialism and postcolonial migration; testimony and life writing; the genocide in Rwanda; British war memories; (gendered) narratives of catastrophe (9/11) and trauma; diasporic memories of South Asian American women; protest memory in the US; material legacies of problematic pasts in landscape; mnemonic spaces and urban memories; and memory in post-conflict cultures in Europe, the Americas, Africa and China.

Activities

Activities of the Research Cluster

Significant results

Selected publications of the Reseach Cluster

Dirk Göttsche (German Studies), Remembering Africa. The Rediscovery of Colonialism in Contemporary German Literature (Rochester/NY: Camden House 2013).

Dirk Göttsche (German Studies), 'Colonialism and National Socialism. Intersecting Memory Discourses in Post-War and Contemporary German Literature', Gegenwartsliteratur. Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch, 9 (2010), 217-242.

Dirk Göttsche (German Studies), 'The Place of Romanticism in the Literary Memory of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars (1848-1914): Roquette, Raabe, Jensen', in Dirk Göttsche und Nicholas Saul (eds), Realism and Romanticism in German Literature. (Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2013), pp. 341-384.

Paul D Grainge (Culture, Film and Media) (ed.), Memory and Popular Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2003).

Nicki Hitchcott (French and Francophone Studies), 'Between Remembering and Forgetting: (In)Visible Rwanda in Gilbert Gatore's Le Passé devant soi', Research in African Literatures 44(2) 2013,79-90.

Nigel Hunt (Medicine: Psychiatry/Applied Psychology), Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge: CUP, 2010).

Katya Krylova (German Studies), Walking Through History: Topography and Identity in the Works of Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard (Oxford, Bern et al.: Peter Lang 2013).

Bram Mertens and Cristian Karner (German Studies/Politics) (eds), The Use and Abuse of Memory: Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics (Somerset, NJ/US: Transaction Publishers 2013).

Franziska Meyer (German Studies) 'Sommerhaus, früher: Jenny Erpenbecks "Heimsuchung" als Korrektur von Familienerinnerungen', Gegenwartsliteratur. Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 11 (2012), 324-343.

Franziska Meyer (German Studies), 'German writers remember 9/11: Katharina Hacker’s "The Have-Nots"', in Lucy Bond and Jessica Rapson (eds): The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2014), pp 209-223.

Bill Niven (NTU, History), 'From countermemorial to combimemorial: developments in German memorialisation', Journal Of War And Culture Studies 6 (1) 2013, 75-91.

Bill Niven (NTU, History) and Stefan Berger (Ruhr Universität Bochum) (eds), Writing the History of Memory (New York: Bloomsbury 2014).

David Norris (Russian and Slavonic Studies) – is currently working on a book project: Haunted Serbia: Narratives of Memory, History and War.

Gareth Stockey (Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, Nottingham), Valley of the Fallen: The (n)ever changing face of General Franco’s monument (Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press 2013).

Teodora Todorova (Culture, Film and Media) ‘Bearing Witness to Al Nakba in a Time of Denial’ in Dina Matar and Zahera Harb (eds): Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communication Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (London: I.B. Taurus 2013), pp 248-270.

Teodora Todorova (Culture, Film and Media), ‘Book Review of ‘Recording Memories from Political Violence: A Filmmaker’s Journey’ by Cahal McLaughlin (2010)’, Journal of Media Practice, 12 (2), 2012, 202-205.

Teodora Todorova (Culture, Film and Media) ‘Giving Memory a Future’: confronting the legacy of mass rape in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina’, in Journal of International Women’s Studies, 12 (2), 2011, 3-15.

Roger Woods (with Birgit Dahlke and Dennis Tate) (German) (eds), German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century (New York: Camden House, 2010).