Astrid Erll

Memory in culture

Ansgar Nünning

This handbook represents the interdisciplinary and international field of “cultural memory studies” for the first time in one volume. Articles by renowned international scholars offer readers a unique overview of the key concepts of cultural memory studies. The handbook not only documents current research in an unprecedented way; it also serves as a forum for bringing together approaches from areas as varied as sociology, political sciences, history, theology, literary studies, media studies, philosophy, psychology, and neurosciences. “Cultural memory studies” – as defined in this handbook – came into being at the beginning of the 20th century, with the works of Maurice Halbwachs on mémoire collective. In the course of the last two decades this area of research has witnessed a veritable boom in various countries and disciplines. As a consequence, the study of the relation of “culture” and “memory” has diversified into a wide range of approaches. This handbook is based on a broad understanding of “cultural memory” as the interplay of present and past in sociocultural contexts. It presents concepts for the study of individual remembering in a social context, group and family memory, national memory, the various media of memory, and finally the host of emerging transnational lieux de mémoire such as 9/11.

An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook

Cultural Memory Studies

Stephanie Wodianka

It is only through certain forms of social use that media become "Media of collective memory". The phenomenon of a "Remembrance film", too (e.g. Das Leben der Anderen, Hotel Ruanda, On connaît la chanson ) only comes about in a plurimedial context with its incorporation into a complex systemic media network that makes it into a remembrance film through various forms of reference. The volume analyses film using the methodology of studies in cultural memory to reveal the functioning of these constellations.

Plurimediale Konstellationen

Film und kulturelle Erinnerung

Roy Sommer

The collection showcases new research in the field of cultural and historical narratology. Starting from the premise of the ‘semantisation of narrative forms’ (A. Nünning), it explores the cultural situatedness and historical transformations of narrative, with contributors developing new perspectives on key concepts of cultural and historical narratology, such as unreliable narration and multiperspectivity. The volume introduces original approaches to the study of narrative in culture, highlighting its pivotal role for attention, memory, and resilience studies, and for the imagination of crises, the Anthropocene, and the Post-Apocalypse. Addressing both fictional and non-fictional narratives, individual essays analyze the narrative-making and unmaking of Europe, Brexit, and the Postcolonial. Finally, the collection features new research on narrative in media culture, looking at the narrative logic of graphic novels, picture books, and newsmedia.

Narrative in Culture

In this volume, concepts of memory from literary studies are systematically recorded for the first time and presented from an historical, theoretical and methodological aspect. The aim is to locate the discussion in the subject discipline within the transdisciplinary discussion of memory and recollection.

Theoretische Grundlegung und Anwendungsperspektiven

Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft

Ann Rigney

The specific concern of this collection is linking the use of media to the larger socio-cultural processes involved in collective memory-making. The focus rests in particular on two aspects of media use: the basic dynamics of mediation and remediation . The key questions are: What role do media play in the production and circulation of cultural memories? How do mediation, remediation and intermediality shape objects and acts of cultural remembrance? How can new, emergent media redefine or transform what is collectively remembered?"

Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory

Sara B. Young

This handbook represents the interdisciplinary and international field of "cultural memory studies" for the first time in one volume. Articles by renowned international scholars offer readers a unique overview of the key concepts of cultural memory studies. The handbook not only documents current research in an unprecedented way; it also serves as a forum for bringing together approaches from areas as varied as sociology, political sciences, history, theology, literary studies, media studies, philosophy, psychology, and neurosciences. "Cultural memory studies" - as defined in this handbook - came into being at the beginning of the 20th century, with the works of Maurice Halbwachs on mémoire collective. In the course of the last two decades this area of research has witnessed a veritable boom in various countries and disciplines. As a consequence, the study of the relation of "culture" and "memory" has diversified into a wide range of approaches. This handbook is based on a broad understanding of "cultural memory" as the interplay of present and past in sociocultural contexts. It presents concepts for the study of individual remembering in a social context, group and family memory, national memory, the various media of memory, and finally the host of emerging transnational lieux de mémoire such as 9/11.

Herbert Grabes

Alongside the recent cultural turn in the humanities, there has been a noticeable return to ethical considerations. With regard to literature as well as other media, this has rekindled awareness of a tension, antagonism, or even disparity between ethics and aesthetics. This volume of articles takes a more systematic and cross-disciplinary approach to the widely mooted ethical turn in literature and other media than has been pursued so far. It brings together a wide range of critical perspectives from literary studies, media and cultural memory studies, and philosophy, tracing the complex and sometimes conflicting relationship between ethics and aesthetics in theoretical contexts and individual case studies as diverse as colonial architecture, nineteenth-century literary histories, and postmodern writing and art.

The Dissemination of Values through Literature and Other Media

Ethics in Culture

This collection of essays brings together two major new developments in cultural memory studies: firstly, the shift away from static models of cultural memory, where the emphasis lies on cultural products, in the direction of more dynamic models where the emphasis lies instead on the cultural and social processes involved in the ongoing production of shared views of the past; and secondly, the growing interest in the role of the media, and their role beyond that of mere storage, within these dynamics. The specific concern of this collection is linking the use of media to the larger socio-cultural processes involved in collective memory-making. The focus rests in particular on two aspects of media use: the basic dynamics of “mediation” and “remediation”. The key questions are: What role do media play in the production and circulation of cultural memories? How do mediation, remediation and intermediality shape objects and acts of cultural remembrance? How can new, emergent media redefine or transform what is collectively remembered? The essays of this collection focus on social, historical, religious, and artistic media-memories. The authors analyze the memory-making impact of news media, the mediation and remediation of lieux de mémoire, the medial representation of colonial and postcolonial, of Holocaust and Second World War memories, and finally the problematization of these very processes in artistic media forms, such as novels and movies.

Sandra Berger

Julia Schütze

Medien werden erst durch bestimmte Formen des sozialen Gebrauchs zu "Medien des kollektiven Gedächtnisses". Auch das Phänomen eines "Erinnerungsfilms" (wie z.B. Das Leben der Anderen, Hotel Ruanda, On connaît la chanson) entsteht erst im plurimedialen Zusammenhang, durch seine Einbettung in ein komplexes mediensystemisches Netzwerk, das ihn durch verschiedene Formen der Bezugnahme zu einem solchen macht. Die im Band konturierte erinnerungskulturwissenschaftliche Filmanalyse macht diese Konstellationen in ihrem Funktionieren sichtbar.

Astrid Erll

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