The Erasure Trilogy explores the anguish caused by the loss of memory - by forgetting, amnesia or suppression - and the resulting human desire to preserve memory, all seen through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Memory Trace, the first project in the trilogy, depicts the ruins caused by the Arab-Israeli War of 1948: portraits of those traumatized by violence, devastated landscapes and fragments of buildings. This visual poem suggests the irreparable loss of a lingering past that augurs a painful and difficult future. Tracing the ironic consequences of David Ben-Gurion's dream of settling the Negev and making the "desert bloom," the aerial photographs in Sheikh's Desert Bloom reveal the myriad actions that have displaced and erased the Bedouins who have lived in the desert for generations. Here we see the extreme transformation of the landscape through erosion, mining, military training camps, the demolition of villages and afforestation. Through Sheikh's lens the desert becomes both an archive of violence and a record of human attempts to erase it. The essential text accompanying Desert Bloom (in the publication, Desert Bloom Notes) explores the historical and contemporary clues along the shifting surface of the desert, and what lies hidden, sealed within Sheikh's aerial landscapes of the Negev. Independence / Nakba consists of sixty-five diptychs - one for each year since 1948 - pairing people from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of gradually increasing age. The double portraits query the relations between Israelis and Palestinians before the founding of the Israeli State (each image depicts either someone who lived in Palestine before the founding of the Israeli State, or someone whose ancestors did). (description from author's website http://www.fazalsheikh.org/projects/the_erasure_triology/description.php)

The heart-pounding first installment of the MacNeice Mysteries, featuring a sophisticated detective solving the horrific murder of a beautiful young violinist — perfect for fans of Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks series. Detective Superintendent MacNeice is returning from a pilgrimage to his wife’s grave when he’s called to a crime scene of singular and disturbing beauty. A young woman in evening dress lies gracefully posed on the floor of a pristine summer cottage so that the finger of one hand regularly interrupts the needle arm of a phonograph playing Schubert’s Piano Trio. The only visible mark on her is the bruise under her chin, which MacNeice recognizes: it is the mark that distinguishes dedicated violinists, the same mark that once graced his wife. The murder is both ingenious and horrific, and soon entangles MacNeice and his team in Eastern Europe’s ancient grievances...

The Erasure Trilogy explores the anguish caused by the loss of memory - by forgetting, amnesia or suppression - and the resulting human desire to preserve memory, all seen through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Memory Trace, the first project in the trilogy, depicts the ruins caused by the Arab-Israeli War of 1948: portraits of those traumatized by violence, devastated landscapes and fragments of buildings. This visual poem suggests the irreparable loss of a lingering past that augurs a painful and difficult future.

"In Memory Traces, art historians and archaeologists come together to examine the nature of sacred space in Mesoamerica. Through five well-known and important centers of political power and artistic invention in Mesoamerica—Tetitla at Teotihuacan, Tula Grande, the Mound of the Building Columns at El Tajín, the House of the Phalli at Chichén Itzá, and Tonina—contributors explore the process of recognizing and defining sacred space, how sacred spaces were viewed and used both physically and symbolically, and what theoretical approaches are most useful for art historians and archaeologists seeking to understand these places.Memory Traces acknowledges that the creation, use, abandonment, and reuse of sacred space has a strongly recursive relation to collective memory and meanings linked to the places in question, and reconciles issues of continuity and discontinuity of memory in ancient Mesoamerican sacred spaces. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Mesoamerican studies and material culture, art historians, architectural historians, and cultural anthropologists."

"Erasure: The Spectre of Cultural Memory explores key issues around the increasing aesthetic and cultural erasure occurring in our society. It moves from the seminal act of the American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg erasing a drawing by the painter Willem de Kooning in 1953, perhaps signalling that an echo or trace would be all that is valued in the future, to the impact that the new technologies - such as Twitter, Facebook, email, smartphones, snapchat and Instagram - are having on family, class, sex, time, speed and space. This erasure is driven by new media technology, globalisation, and new structures of education, work, home and consumption. Erasure: The Spectre of Cultural Memory is the first book that brings together artists, curators, scholars and thinkers who are, in their respective contexts, at the forefront of these compelling questions"--Publisher's website.

This essay collection examines the dynamics of memory organization and the way it varies among different media and modes of discourse in post-unification Germany. German unification has put the post-war period into a historical perspective. Such a rupture raises questions concerning the appropriate commemoration, preservation and reinterpretation of the past. The processes of reorientation after unification influenced the self-perception of literary authors as well as the social role, position and status of German literature. They also affected the way writers viewed the competition in which they found themselves pitted against visual and electronic media as rival windows on the past. In the context of several debates on German literature during the 1990s the discussion revolved not only around the adequate aesthetic representation of the historical and cultural heritage but even more so around the role of literature itself in that process. The contributions look at different discourses that were and still are concerned with reinterpreting and creating new collective symbols and narrative patterns in relation to Germany's past. The volume focuses on the effects of the characteristic discourses of the press, literature and its different genres, film, the internet and memorials on the depiction and performance of memories.