This volume brings together Ron Eyerman’s most important interventions in the field of cultural trauma and offers an accessible entry point into the origins and development of this theory and a framework of an analysis that has now achieved the status of a research paradigm. This collection of disparate essays, published between 2004 and 2018, coheres around an original introduction that not only provides a historical overview of cultural trauma, but is also an important theoretical contribution to cultural trauma and collective identity in its own right. The Afterword from esteemed sociologist Eric Woods connects the essays and explores their significance for the broader fields of sociology, behavioral science, and trauma studies..

In this book, Ron Eyerman explores the formation of the African-American identity through the theory of cultural trauma. The trauma in question is slavery, not as an institution or as personal experience, but as collective memory: a pervasive remembrance that grounded a people's sense of itself. Combining a broad narrative sweep with more detailed studies of important events and individuals, Eyerman reaches from Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression, the New Deal and the Second World War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond. He offers insights into the intellectual and generational conflicts of identity-formation which have a truly universal significance, as well as providing a compelling account of the birth of African-American identity. Anyone interested in questions of assimilation, multiculturalism and postcolonialism will find this book indispensable.

This book explores the complex relationships that exist between memory, nostalgia, writing and identity.

Five sociologists develop a theoretical model of 'cultural trauma' & build a new understanding of how social groups interact with emotion to create new & binding understandings of social responsibility.

In The Long Defeat, Akiko Hashimoto explores the stakes of war memory in Japan after its catastrophic defeat in World War II, showing how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Divisive war memories lie at the root of the contentious politics surrounding Japan's pacifist constitution and remilitarization, and fuel the escalating frictions in East Asia known collectively as Japan's "history problem." Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and a wealth of popular memory data, this book identifies three preoccupations - national belonging, healing, and justice - in Japan's discourses of defeat. Hashimoto uncovers the key war memory narratives that are shaping Japan's choices - nationalism, pacifism, or reconciliation - for addressing the rising international tensions and finally overcoming its dark history.

Clinical practice and legal issues in trauma and memory. -- Mental health and memories of traumatic events. -- Cognitive and physiological perspectives on trauma and memory. -- Evidence and controversies in understanding memories for traumatic events.

How do contemporary African American authors relate trauma, memory, and the recovery of the past with the processes of cultural and identity formation in African American communities? Patricia San José analyses a variety of novels by authors like Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and David Bradley and explores these works as valuable instruments for the disclosure, giving voice, and public recognition of African American collective and historical trauma.