Bringing together innovative and internationally renowned experts, this volume provides concise presentations of the main concepts and cutting-edge research fields in the study of culture (rather than the infinite multitude of possible themes). More specifically, the volume outlines different models for the study of culture, explores avenues for interdisciplinary exchange, assesses key concepts and traces their travels across various disciplinary, historical and national contexts. To trace the travelling of concepts means to map both their transfer from one discipline, approach or culture of research to another, and also to identify the transformations which emerge through these processes of transfer. The volume serves to show that working with (travelling) concepts provides a unique strategy for research and research design which can open up a wide range of promising perspectives for interdisciplinary exchange. It offers an exemplary overview of an interdisciplinary and international approach to the travelling concepts that organize, structure and shape the study of culture. In doing so, the volume serves to initiate a dialogue that exceeds disciplinary and national boundaries and introduces a self-reflexive dimension to the field, thus affording a recognition of how deeply disciplinary premises and nation-specific research traditions affect different approaches in the study of culture.

This book investigates the transnational dimensions of European cultural memory and how it contributes to the construction of new non-, supra, and post-national, but also national, memory narratives. The volume considers how these narratives circulate not only within Europe, but also through global interactions with other locations. The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures responds to recent academic calls to break with methodological nationalism in memory studies. Taking European memory as a case study, the book offers new empirical and theoretical insights into the transnational dimensions of cultural memory, without losing sight of the continued relevance of the nation. The articles critically examine the ways in which various individuals, organizations, institutions, and works of art are mobilizing future-oriented memories of Europe to construct new memory narratives. Taking into account the heterogeneity and transnational locations of commemorative groups, the multidirectionality of acts of remembrance, and a variety of commemorative media such as museums, film, photography, and literature, the volume not only investigates how memory discourses circulate within Europe, but also how they are being transferred, translated, or transformed through global interactions beyond the European continent.

This collection provides a long-overdue examination of the nineteenth century as a crucible of new commemorative practices. Distinctive memory cultures emerged during this period which would fundamentally reshape public and private practices of remembrance in the modern world. The essays in this volume bring together scholars of History, Literature, Art History, and Musicology to explore uses of memory in nineteenth-century empire-building and constructions of national identity, cultures of sentiment and mourning practices, and discourses of race and power. Contributors approach the topic through case studies of Europe, the United States, and the British Empire. Their analyses of nineteenth-century innovations in commemoration at both the personal and the larger civic and political levels will appeal to students and scholars of memory and of the nineteenth-century world.

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.

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.

In recent years memory has attracted increasing attention. From analyses of electronic communication and the Internet to discussions of heritage culture, to debates about victimhood and sexual abuse, memory is currently generating much cultural interest. This interdisciplinary collection takes a journey through memory in order to contextualize this current "memory boom." Memory Cultures focuses on memories "outside"--in the many fields within which understandings of memory have been produced. It focuses less on memory as an object whose inner workings are to be studied, and more on memory as a concept. It traces the genealogies of our contemporary Western understandings of memory through studies of the early modern arts of memory. It also discusses nineteenth-century evolutionary museums, and the modernist explorations of artists and writers. Here it explores the differences between Western and non-Western concepts of the lived past and compares understandings of memory in history, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume is divided into five parts: "Believing the Body"; "Propping the Subject"; "What Memory Forgets: Models of the Mind"; "What History Forgets: Memory and Time"; and "Memory Beyond the Modern." Individual essays by many of the foremost international scholars in memory studies trace memory's intimate association with identity and recognition, with cities, with lived time, with the science of the mind, with fantasy and with the media. Memory Cultures will be of essential interest to those working in the fields of cultural studies, history and also anthropology.

This volume addresses the complex relationship between memory, culture, and gender--as well as the representation of women in national memory--in several European countries. An international group of contributors explore the national allegories of memory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the relationship between violence and war in the recollections of both families and the state, and the methodological approaches that can be used to study a gendered culture of memory.