This book is the first to discover and probe in depth memory phenomena captured in literary works. Using literature as a laboratory for the workings of the mind, this comparative study of writers from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Octavio Paz, including Proust, Breton, Woolf and Faulkner, uncovers valuable material for the classification of the memory process. Nalbantian's daring interdisciplinary work, involving literature, science, and art, forges a new model for dialogue between the disciplines.

About a tech company that deletes unwanted memories, the consequences for those forced to contend with what they tried to forget, and the dissenting doctor who seeks to protect her patients from further harm

Cultural Memory, a subtle and comprehensive process of identity formation, promotion and transmission, is considered as a set of symbolic practices and protocols, with particular emphasis on repositories of memory and the institutionalized forms in which they are embodied. High and low culture as texts embedded in the texture of memory, as well as material culture as a communal receptacle and reservoir of memory are analysed in their historical contingency. Symbolic representations of accepted and counter history/ies, and the cultural nodes and mechanisms of the cultural imaginary are also issues of central interest. Twenty-six contributions tackle these topics from a theoretical and historical perspective and bring to the fore case studies illustrating the interdisciplinary agenda that underlies the volume. Contributors: Luis Manuel A.V. Bernardo, Lina Bolzoni, Peter Burke, Pia Brinzeu, Adina Ciugureanu, Thomas Docherty, Christoph Ehland, Herbert Grabes, László Gyapay, Donna Landry, Christoph Lehner, Gerald MacLean, Dragoş Manea, Daniel Melo, Mirosława Modrzewska, Rareş Moldovan, C.W.R.D. Mosely, Petruţa Năiduţ, Francesca Orestano, Maria Lúcia G. Pallares-Burke, Andreea Paris, Leonor Santa Bárbara, Hans-Peter Söder, Jukka Tiusanen, Ludmila Volná, Ioana Zirra.

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.

"Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad. Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale. Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man's quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality"--

Perfect for fans of The Scent Keeper and The Keeper of Lost Things, an atmospheric and enchanting debut novel about two women haunted by buried secrets but bound by a shared gift and the power the past holds over our lives. Ev has a mysterious ability, one that she feels is more a curse than a gift. She can feel the emotions people leave behind on objects and believes that most of them need to be handled extremely carefully, and—if at all possible—destroyed. The harmless ones she sells at Vancouver’s Chinatown Night Market to scrape together a living, but even that fills her with trepidation. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Harriet hoards thousands of these treasures and is starting to make her neighbors sick as the overabundance of heightened emotions start seeping through her apartment walls. When the two women meet, Harriet knows that Ev is the only person who can help her make something truly spectacular of her collection. A museum of memory that not only feels warm and inviting but can heal the emotional wounds many people unknowingly carry around. They only know of one other person like them, and they fear the dark effects these objects had on him. Together, they help each other to develop and control their gift, so that what happened to him never happens again. But unbeknownst to them, the same darkness is wrapping itself around another, dragging them down a path that already destroyed Ev’s family once, and threatens to annihilate what little she has left. The Memory Collectors casts the everyday in a new light, speaking volumes to the hold that our past has over us—contained, at times, in seemingly innocuous objects—and uncovering a truth that both women have tried hard to bury with their pasts: not all magpies collect shiny things—sometimes they gather darkness.

The advent of the new age has alerted us to the conflicted nature of historical memory which defined the 20th century while simultaneously assaulting us with new historical upheavals that demand responsibility and critical consideration. As the historical text bears traces of the writing subject, the element of deception is remarkable, meaning historical memory easily lends itself to forgery and false and subjective projections. As such, how do we think about the past, about history, about memory, and how does memory function? Is history an objective account, a collection of dry, reliable facts? Is it an imaginative narrative, tinged with nostalgia, a projection of our wishful thinking, the workings of our subjective perceptions and attitudes, our states of mind? The essays in this volume focus on the relevance of the past to the present and future in terms of the shifting attitudes to personal and collective experiences that have shaped dominant Western critical discourses about history, memory, and nostalgia. The contributors here take issue with the epistemological, hermeneutic, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of the representational practices through which we revisit and revise the meaning of the past.