Realms of Memory

As the host of the hit true crime podcast, Surviving the Survivor, Joel Waldman spends his days airing commentary on the nation’s most heartbreaking and horrific crime stories.  Yet Joel grew up knowing very little about how his own mother Karmela, or Karm as he affectionately calls her, survived the Holocaust while her father and grandfather were gassed at Auschwitz.  Joel’s book, based on interviews with his mother, Surviving the...

When do we choose to suppress the past not just as a coping mechanism but to protect our loved ones?  Can refusing to dwell on the past and fixing our sites on the future be understood as a conscious and deliberate choice to reject the label of the victim and to adopt an optimistic outlook on life?  A conversation with Joel Waldman about his book, Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation about Life (& Death) with ...

Objects recovered from sites of mass atrocities have a special significance today.  This is because we live in what University College Dublin Professor Lea David labels as a human rights memorialization culture.  Central to this culture is the conviction that we should face difficult histories, we should remember human rights abuses, and victims should be the focus of our memorization efforts.  Objects from sites of mass atrocities...

A broken wristwatch, battered glasses or a tattered wallet, how can ordinary objects discovered at sites of mass atrocities become powerfully moving?  University College Dublin Professor Lea David calls them desire objects because they take on new and ever changing meanings from their discovery to their use in courtrooms and museums.  The most emotionally charged of all of these objects are shoes.  Now almost mandatory memory piece...

There are limits to our ability to cope with traumatic events.  When we are unable to mourn, process, and come to terms with the past we run the risk of suffering from sociocultural trauma.  This is what Tony Robben argues afflicts the people of Argentina.  Utrecht University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Tony Robben explains how repeated forms of betrayal of trust are the root cause of sociocultural trauma in Argentina.  As ...

The number of disappeared from the years of dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) is still unknown.  What is clear is the lingering trauma.  Anthropologist Tony Robben has spent his career studying the repercussions of this era.  Robben argues that the inability to mourn the dead and the military’s continued refusal to take responsibility for the past has splintered Argentina into competing memory communities. A conversation with T...

Beginning with calls for never again, we’re living in an age where the duty to remember has become sacrosanct.  Memory has become a means of righting past wrongs, fostering trust and strengthening social cohesion.  But is it also possible to see memory as a destabilizing force, undercutting the prospects for peace and stability?  This is precisely what David Rieff argues in his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and it...

When should we remember difficult and divisive histories?  After a career of covering conflicts around the globe, writer and political analyst David Reiff offers his thoughts on the question. In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies, Rieff posits that in some cases there is a consensus around the need to remember past crimes.  More often, however, there is no agreement.  The only way out of messy conflicts is to a...

The people on the borders have been forgotten and left out of the story of the partition of Ireland.  Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, the three lost counties of Ulster, are both a source of shame and embarrassment for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.  They are an unrecognized minority within the largely homogenized Catholic nation of Ireland.  They are also the abandoned kin of the people of the six counties of Ulster tha...

Typically left out of the story of the partition of Ireland are the three lost counties of Ulster.  These are the counties of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan that were excluded from what became Northern Ireland despite their historic ties and shared stand against the creation of an independent Irish state.  If Dublin and Belfast failed to form closer ties, it is impossible to understand why without considering the lost counties.  If t...

The memory of the Soviet triumph in World War II, or what is known as the Great Patriotic War, has become the centerpiece of Russian nationalism today. Penn State Professor Katya Haskins argues that the propensity to remember the victory over Nazi Germany and to forget Stalin’s terror contributes to the Russian willingness to support the war in Ukraine. Steeped in the memory of the Great Patriotic War, Russians are inclined to beli...

The memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War, has become the centerpiece of Russian nationalism.  State driven politics of memory, however, cannot fully explain this development.  Duty bound to remember the unimaginable sacrifices of the World War II generation, Russian families are a receptive audience to patriotic messaging.  Products of a Soviet Culture with a long history ...

From Spain to the Baltic States Europe is littered with sites connected to the personal lives of former dictators.  Birthplaces, childhood homes, summer and winter residences, mausoleums and tombs these sites of dictators can be powerful poles of attraction for extremists, nostalgists, and dark tourists.  They can also offer opportunities to bolster democratic systems by educating citizens about difficult pasts. How have Europeans ...

Continental Europe is littered with the memory sites of past dictators.  From birthplaces to summer residences, these remains from Europe’s darkest chapters present serious challenges to the democratic present.  How do Europeans confront this past?  Find out from historian  Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, author of Sites of the Dictators: Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020, on the April 1st episode of the Realms of Memory podcas...

The National Rifle Association, known simply as the NRA, is often cast as a giant bogeyman for proponents of gun reform.  Fears about the NRA are largely based on a misreading and misunderstanding of the organization as a political lobby whose influence peddling in Washington is the chief impediment to sensible gun reform. Entirely off the radar is the true source of power and influence of the NRA, its ability to shape a dynamic Am...

The National Rifle Association is often understood as a powerful political lobby able to influence politicians and shape legislation.  University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Noah Schwartz argues that the true power of the NRA is how it uses storytelling and memory.  Through its extensive cultural, educational, and communications resources, the stories and memories circulated by the NRA have much to do with how American...

The 9/11 2001 attacks on America unleashed a surge of memorial work unmatched since the Civil War.  New York City became a magnet for billions of dollars of spending on the construction of a memorial, museum, and high profile projects such as One World Trade Centre and the Oculus.  What do these projects reveal about the nature, constraints, and abuses of 9/11 memory? To what extent have they helped or hindered American efforts to ...

The attacks of September 11th 2001 challenged core beliefs about how Americans understand themselves, their relationship to others and their place in the world.  How Americans responded to the attacks through their memorial work and the rebuilding of ground zero in New York City is the focus of Marita Sturken’s book Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums and Architecture in the Post 9/11 Era.  A conversation with New York...

In 1989 and 2004 something unusual happened in the town of Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi.  After decades of silence whites finally joined their black neighbors in commemorating the 1964 murders of three young civil rights workers.  What was different about 2004, however, was that the commemoration was just the beginning. The organizers forged an identity, as the Philadelphia Coalition, and went on to achieve several t...