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."

This volume provides an overview of theories of cultural memory that are intensively discussed in cultural studies and humanities disciplines such as history, sociology, literary studies, art history, and media studies. Cultural memory encompasses all rituals, institutions and practices through which communities establish their identity and common origin, which are challenged by the digital turn today. The book presents, on the one hand, basic arguments by the most important memory theorists of the 20th and 21st centuries and, on the other, exemplary descriptions of the most significant forms of cultural memory.

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.

This book questions the sociocultural dimensions of remembering. It offers an overview of the history and theory of memory studies through the lens of sociology, political science, anthropology, psychology, literature, art and media studies; documenting current international and interdisciplinary memory research in an unprecedented way.

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.

Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural heritage where groups and communities ascribe values, develop memories, and shape their collective identity.

In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.