Search

This article examines the ways in which British Second World War conscientious objectors (COs) have been commemorated, memorialized, and represented since 1945. Despite comprising nearly 60 000 men, the CO is strikingly absent in both the popular narrative of the Second World War and official, institutional commemorations of the conflict. This is not true of their First World War counterpart. This is unsurprising: the Second World War CO is largely at odds with popular British conceptions of the war as a ‘just’ conflict. Nevertheless, a broad and diverse set of initiatives have been established to commemorate the CO. The CO also features in numerous forms of post-war popular culture, including fiction, films, television programmes, and plays. It is these disparate remembrance practices and representations that this article brings together to help us explore both the memory of wartime conscientious objection and the broader cultural legacies of the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, national historic sites have played a major role in helping shape the historical narrative in western Canada and throughout the country. In this Forum article I examine how heritage is defined and assess the way the early commemoration of historic sites in the west, including fur trade posts and battle sites associated with the North-West Resistance of 1885, set a conventional direction for what was important in western Canadian history and, just as significantly, what was not. I investigate the changing and at one time progressive role of historical research in Parks Canada, the agency responsible for managing these sites. I consider the later attempts by the agency to refute this innovative research in favour of a return to original, authorized, and archetypal colonialist messages, at the same time narrowing the scope of historical interpretation. Although very recent initiatives have attempted to broaden historic site interpretation in the West, Parks Canada is still faced with attempting to use commemorated and celebrated colonial spaces to communicate post-colonial messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reveals how the official patterns of commemorating the Soviet historical past in Russia match its local projections. Based on interviews with experts from 27 regions and some other field materials, the article maps the diversity of commemorative agendas across Russia. Focusing on the violent aspects of Soviet history, it outlines current configurations of the usable past important for local identity and notably used by regional authorities and other mnemonic actors over time. These repertoires of the usable past depend on the cultural infrastructure that was formed over time, but also on the efforts of mnemonic actors, who promote specific memories. This article argues that although regional approaches to commemorating the historical past are evidently dominated by the official federal narrative, local visions of common history are far from being uniform. The aspects that are downplayed or silenced at the federal level might be indispensable to regional and local identities. Expert interviews suggest that collisions between the narratives circulating at different levels typically do not escalate to open conflicts. The commemorative projects supported by regional authorities tend to conform to the federal-level framing, which is flexible enough to tolerate some local peculiarities. However, in many regions there are also non-state mnemonic actors who promote a commemorative agenda that deviates from the official state discourse. While being short of resources for developing memory hardware, they affect public discussions raising awareness about the downplayed aspects of the local past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is cross-cultural communication around music in the British Asian diaspora shaped by the Partition of 1947? This article will discuss this question through a case study of the writings and relationships of four key South Asian music enthusiasts: one female patron of music, and three male scholar-researchers of music who befriended each other, and in the process redefined rāgadārī (classical) music publics in Britain, beginning in the 1970s and 80s. Through a discussion of their life-stories and narratives I reveal the importance of (i) storytelling and memory in the creation of diasporic homemaking, (ii) a gendered politics of musical commemoration, (iii) the anecdote as 'musical gift' (qua Sykes), and (iv) postcolonial cultural custodianship, in producing a unique rāgadārī musical public in London, across the Indo-Pak national border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia Contemporanea is the property of Historia Contemporania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the process of memorializing the legacy of V. I. Surikov (1848– 1916) during the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. As a renowned artist, he remained connected to his homeland, significantly influencing the development of artistic life in Siberia. The focus is on the involvement of staff from the Krasnoyarsk City Museum (later known as the Museum of the Yenisei Region) in preserving the artist’s heritage, as well as their activities in 1926, marking the tenth anniversary of his death. The relevance of this study is underscored not only by an interest in the life and work of this eminent artist but also by an analysis of how his remarkable persona shaped historical memory and the cultural-historical potential of the region. Utilizing a wide range of sources, the research encompasses a significant historical period and outlines, in chronological order, a series of initiatives aimed at preserving the memory of this notable figure in his native Krasnoyarsk. The article highlights the close collaboration between the Krasnoyarsk Museum and members of the Surikov family — A. I. Surikov and O. V. Konchalovskaya. The findings conclude that without the active participation of the Museum of the Yenisei Region, preserving the memory of this distinguished local figure would have been impossible. In conclusion, it is noted that the memorialization process unfolded over an extended period, and today, the artist’s name serves as a brand for Krasnoyarsk.

Recent years have seen various forms of honorific public art – statues, monuments, and the like – brought under renewed moral scrutiny. This scrutiny has resulted in some high-profile removals, some defacement and additional contextualization to augment existing objects, and some cases of the status quo prevailing. Scholarly treatment of the issues has similarly resulted in arguments that articulate competing values that support removal, modification or preservation. I bring the insights of these arguments to bear on specifically military commemorations, where I argue that they have ample application, but where they do not exhaust the moral complexity to be confronted. This is true first because military commemoration introduces a novel moral concern of militarism, and second because military commemoration frequently has a distinctively normative function of expressing gratitude. Both these points are most powerfully observed in collections of commemorations, rather than individual monuments, a distinction that deepens ongoing discussions about problematic commemorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I engage in a discourse analysis of National Geographic's docuseries "9/11: One Day in America" to argue that the series' multi-layered effort at commemoration, geared as a long-awaited "full" telling of the 9/11 story, but committed to honoring a specific group of victims and survivors, is enabled by a disorienting temporality that raises questions about the role of national memorials and archives at this moment. Temporality is essential to the development of narrative, and with narrative a central element in the making of memory worlds, temporality cannot be underestimated as a key factor in how memories take shape. "One Day" depends on structural instantiations of time to develop its narrative as authentic memory, reflecting a paradoxical linear yet circular pattern that simultaneously authenticates and undermines the veracity of the story it tells. "One Day" transports viewers into lower Manhattan and through the events of 9/11 via a vividly illustrated timeline. But while a linear version of time in "One Day" supports the telling of survivor stories and the memorialization of the dead, the overarching effect of the timeline for viewers is circular, transporting viewers back in time to 2001 and a state of fear and confusion, forcing collective memory to exist in a repetitive temporality that excuses a turn away from history and consequences. The resulting circular mechanism for commemoration allows cultural institutions, like the ones represented in "One Day," to emphasize the past at the expense of more critical understandings of both history and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to discuss how the state of the Republic of China, which is Chinese-oriented, created the discourse of the national holiday of Peace Memorial Day to reinforce Taiwanese nationalism. Peace Memorial Day was proclaimed to commemorate the tragedy of the state's massacre of Taiwanese locals on 28 February 1947, usually known as the '228 Incident'. Based on resources collected from the two officially sponsored museums, this study explored how the Republic of China government has 'selectively' presented the sources of the 228 Incident, reshaping the contested text as part of a mnemonic past shared by itself and society, and on which basis it has developed the cultural discourse embodying Taiwanese nationhood. The research results also suggest that the officially constructed memory underscores the core value of democratisation not only to reinforce the notion regarding the Republic of China as a 'Taiwanese' government, but also to mark the distinction between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China as two 'national' unities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text captures the memories of architect Távora and the deep connection his collaborators had with him. It describes their regular lunch gatherings, filled with laughter and meaningful conversations. The bond they shared extended beyond the professional realm and into a cherished friendship. After Távora’s passing, his collaborators continued to honor his legacy through tradition and commemoration. The group, fondly referred to as Tavorianni, has sought to preserve Távora’s memory and impact through gatherings and a documentary project to record the stories and experiences he left behind.

The article presents the study results of the main stages, forms and promoters of the cult of Kvitka Cisyk in Ukraine. Kvitka Cisyk was a US citizen born in the US. However, she attached great importance to her Ukrainian origin and tried to reflect this Ukrainian ethnic self-identification in her work. However, she became much more famous worldwide because of her work as a singer for advertising products commissioned by leading American corporations than as a perform- er of Ukrainian lyrical songs. The article’s authors focused on the history and current state of public commemoration of Kvitka Cisyk in Ukraine. An interdisciplinary approach was applied; in particular, psychological hypothetical explanations were made regarding the motivation of the promoters of some commemorative actions. With the help of a comparative analysis of Ukrainian and foreign mass media, the key events, forms, and directions of the commemoration of Kvitka Cisyk on the territory of Ukraine are determined, the influence of many actions, individuals, including leaders of public opinion, on the formation of the mod- ern Ukrainian mass media image of this advertising industry figure is characterized. Systematized, in chronological order, the history of naming dozens of Ukrainian streets in honour of Kvitka Cisyk. The practical significance of the article lies, in particular, in providing recommendations and means of their imple- mentation for educational institutions that train specialists in the field of advertising and public relations. A number of hypotheses have been put forward that can stimulate further scientific explorations of the Ukrainian commemoration of Kvitka Cisyk. In the educational process, in the training of specialists in advertising and public relations, it is worth drawing more attention of future figures of the advertising business and related industries to the example of Kvitka Tsysyk’s achievements and honoring these achievements. After all, Kvitka Tsysyk is currently in Ukraine, apparently, the most glorified, honored figure in the advertising business. Receiving such recognition, immortalization in the names of streets, awards, museums, and creative contests is for many actors no less, and for some, much stronger than material reward, a stimulus for professional growth, hard work in the chosen business field.

Since the sinking of SS Arandora Star 84 years ago, the memory of this tragic wartime incident has been strongly held and developed within the British Italian community, moving through several phases, from oblivion to recognition and commemoration to a more recent growing awareness in a wider mnemonic community of interest. The aim of this special issue is threefold: to raise further the profile of the Arandora Star ; to consolidate and secure the uncertain historical foundations of the event; and to advance the historiography by introducing new facts and perspectives and uncovering previously hidden or unknown aspects both of the past and the continuing afterlife. The six articles presented move logically through the history and stages of memory evolution and its manifestation – internment and deportation, the sinking itself, material, cultural and political aspects of the deathscape, oral histories, the multimedia 'archive', with finally, an embarkation listing to plug a serious knowledge gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latino Studies is the property of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the on-going memorialization practices of Mbuya Nehanda and Gukurahundi that are performed and contested in various discursive spaces in Zimbabwe. It analyses the media discourses surrounding two seminal commemorative events that occurred concurrently on 25 May 2021. Firstly, the government unveiled a statue of Nehanda, a liberation heroine, in the capital, Harare. On the same day, the Gukurahundi survivors erected a memorial plaque at Bhalagwe to commemorate the victims of a genocide that was orchestrated by the government in Matabeleland between 1983 and 1987. Drawing upon Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory, we explore how these different histories are intertwined and entangled in public spaces as various mnemonic communities seek to assert and endorse their narratives of the past. Findings from on our analysis of news media reports demonstrate the entanglements, synergies and interconnectedness of Nehanda and Gukurahundi histories in various ways. On the one hand, Nehanda and Gukurahundi memories represent histories of victimization and injustices. On the other hand, they demonstrate the divergences and contestations surrounding national memory and identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces of many past events are often layered or superposed, in brain, body, and world alike. This often poses challenges for individuals and groups, both in accessing specific past events and in regulating or managing coexisting emotions or attitudes. We sometimes struggle, for example, to find appropriate modes of engagement with places with complex and difficult pasts. More generally, there can appear to be a tension between what we know about the highly constructive nature of remembering, whether it is drawing on neural or worldly resources or both, and the ways that we need and use memory to make claims on the past, and to maintain some appropriate causal connections to past events. I assess the current state of work on situated affect and distributed memory, and the recent criticisms of the 'dogma of harmony' in these fields. I then deploy these frameworks to examine some affective dimensions of place memory, sketching a strongly distributed conception of places as sometimes partly constituting the processes and activities of feeling and remembering. These approaches also offer useful perspectives on the problems of how to engage – politically and aesthetically – with difficult pasts and historically burdened heritage. In assessing artistic interventions in troubled places, we can seek responsibly to do justice to the past while fully embracing the dynamic and contested constructedness of our present emotions, memories, and activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what way might public statues wrong people? In recent years, philosophers have drawn on speech act theory to answer this question by arguing that statues constitute harmful or disrespectful forms of speech. My aim in this paper will be add a different theoretical perspective to this discussion. I will argue that while the speech act approach provides a useful starting point for thinking about what is wrong with public statues, we can get a fuller understanding of these wrongs by drawing on resources from recent work in situated affectivity. I will argue that public statues can be understood as affective artifacts and that this can both help us understand both the deep affective wrongs caused by public statues and offer a possible explanation as to why some people are so strongly opposed to their removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, focusing on embodied material simulation. I argue that the museum constructs an idealized Oklahoman citizen who works to curb anxieties surrounding domestic threats. The museum mobilizes ideal citizenship through its affective storytelling that functions to traumatize visitors to establish catharsis, which in turn invites visitors to place the blame of domestic terrorism solely on Timothy McVeigh. The rhetorical act of catharsis stunts the community's ability to challenge the rise of domestic terrorism that has been plaguing the United States long after the Oklahoma City bombing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The misremembering by Americans of the Spanish-Cuban-American War was not an accident of either time or place. Rather, it was a collaboration between the citizenry, political and business elites, and the military-industrial complex centered on the cult of the fallen soldier. As businessmen carved up the Cuban landscape and the military occupied Guantanamo Bay, the war dead played one last service of memory. American commemoration of fallen soldiers acted as a shroud to obscure the practices of American imperialism. The recovery of the war dead thus provides an interesting example of how officials wanted Americans to remember the conflict. Most of the fallen died from disease rather than combat. Recovering the war dead thus entailed an elaborate process of sanitizing the "sick" dead and disinfecting the remains of warriors buried in foreign and tropical soil to repatriate them back to the United States. The metaphorical intersected with the medical in presenting dead soldiers from an imperialistic war with "clean and sterile bones" that would neither threaten the health of the general public nor their collective memory. Such a re-presentation would help shape how Americans remember a clean and sterile "Splendid Little War" without acknowledging the mucky details of empire-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are we to treat images of genocide that flood our screens? I address this question by discussing the circulation of these images in the wake of a long history of variously documented Palestinian disasters. I frame my comments around two axes: the potential danger and efficacy of the humanitarian image and the practice of young Palestinians smiling to the camera as they were arrested during the attacks on the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem in 2021, and consider them in relation to the production and circulation of images about the 1976 siege and fall of Tall al-Zaʿtar in Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the way a family fashioned a memorial to a son 'taken by the war'. It focuses on the Robert's collection in Melbourne, Australia's largest bound collection of war time ephemera, and the making of what was called 'Frank's Memory Book'. It argues that families asserted ownership over their dead, crafting different modes of memorialization to authorized modes of remembrance, considers the way communities of mourners were brought together and highlights tensions between private loss and public memory. The making of ephemera is examined at length as is the part material culture plays in libraries and archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: On each anniversary of the Montréal Massacre, activist Farrah Khan shares information about the current year's femicide victims on Twitter (now X), raising questions about how victims of gender-based violence (GBV) are represented and memorialized. Analysis: This research comprises an analysis of Khan's December 6 tweets and users' replies from 2017 to 2020, as well as semi-structured interviews with activists and collaborators, to determine what social media strategies activists use to draw attention to and shape public discourse on violence against women. Conclusions and implications: By memorializing victims of GBV on Twitter, Khan and her collaborators rework a traditional genre—the obituary—to serve feminist ends, challenging misconceptions about who experiences GBV and who perpetrates it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings are often portrayed as a wave of failed revolutions that devolved rapidly into anarchic violence. Yemen and Libya appear to illustrate this dynamic par excellence, as interim governments collapsed in the face of violence, war, and humanitarian disasters by 2014. Although studies of these revolutions have proliferated in recent years, the fuller range of outcomes emerging from the Arab Spring at the local level and in everyday life have comprised a theoretical and empirical black box. Based on the grounded analysis of ethnographic data from Yemen and Libya during the post-Arab Spring interim periods (2012–2013), this study argues that although the 2011 revolutions failed to achieve their major goals, they succeeded in breaking down normative forms of incumbent authoritarian power across major urban centers. As a result, activists and ordinary citizens gained what we call newfound "civic opportunities" to make political claims in Yemen and Libya's emergent civic spheres. Participants did so by repurposing their built environment for artistic expression, engaging in peaceful collective action, and publicly commemorating the victims and heroes of anti-regime resistance. While civic opportunities were later eclipsed by violence, we argue that revolutions failing to instigate democratic change from "above" can nevertheless create meaningful civic opportunities for democratic practices from "below." The study concludes by suggesting how this mobilization matters for future waves of protest and democratization, and for the scholarly investigation of revolution outcomes more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sheds light on memory politics in Mongolia. It focuses on the memorial complex dedicated to G.K. Zhukov, which includes a museum, a monument and a street. The research design is tailored to identify the ways of using history for political purposes. The study draws on three groups of empirical sources, that are the author’s personal observations, the publications in Mongolian and Russian media as well as public statements made by the heads of states. The paper analyses how the political status of the memorial has evolved since the 20th century, by emphasizing different cultural and political meanings attached to the exposition and the facade of the museum. The article also considers commemoration practices associated with the memorial complex. The study concludes that the inclusion of the museum in the sphere of public commemoration at the head-of-state level is linked to the restoration of military and political cooperation between Russia and Mongolia in 2008.

East Africa presents striking examples of the different ways in which states may seek to promote forgetting through control or suppression of memories of mass violence. In Rwanda, the 1994 genocide is intensively memorialized, yet violence committed by the ruling party is not part of the official history. In Burundi, a power-sharing deal to end a civil war led to the erasure of memory through deliberate neglect. In Kenya, sites of terrorist violence have been fortified and reopened in the name of resilience—a form of triumphalist amnesia. Yet in each country, citizens practice informal varieties of commemoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the relationship between religion and football has gained considerable interest during the last twenty years, scant attention has been paid to the relationship between pilgrimage and football. This paper seeks to advance the study of this relationship through an exploration of collective memory about football disasters that throws fresh light on central themes within pilgrimage studies—pilgrimage as both a journey to a sacred place and the performance of diverse rituals at such places. The paper explores, in particular, the ways in which three different tragedies involving English football clubs have been commemorated through journeys to and ritual performance at places seen as sacred to those involved in commemoration—football stadiums and urban spaces, and cathedrals and pilgrimage shrines in England, Germany and Italy. Through this analysis, we seek to show how the commemoration of football disaster is linked to pilgrimage as a process where people seek healing and reconciliation through the public performance of rituals that link the local to the global. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructing narratives of memory has long been acknowledged as a major component of nationalism and nation building. In Israel the memory of the Holocaust is widely seen as constituting one of these major components and is at the core of Israeli national identity. Since the early 2000s, the imminent passing of Holocaust survivors has resulted in an intense preoccupation with the question of the future of this memory. This preoccupation has produced new commemorative initiatives engaging with interactive digital platforms. In our article we explore the role of human agency in successfully conjuring up alternative or forgotten memories that dramatically transform contemporary remembrance landscapes by analyzing two recent commemorative projects in Israel, Zikaron Besalon and Eva's story. Informed by the understanding of the centrality of temporal orientations to the dynamics of social interaction in our analysis we adopt a temporal framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of a disaster or crisis, studies have long documented aid and support for the affected community, creating a therapeutic space for members to cope with the associated losses. This support can be expressed in a number of mediums including donation dollars, volunteer hours or through well-wishes offered online. One example of this support that has transcended virtual and geographic boundaries and emerged as material culture is the #strong slogan. Within the past 10 years, these slogans use the name of a disaster-affected community followed by “strong” (e.g. El Paso Strong, Boston Strong, Jersey Strong) both online and in material culture (e.g. stickers or Tshirts) to raise awareness and often funds following a tragic event. Using news media of #strong coverage over the past decade, this research investigates how these slogans represent therapeutic communities and contribute to the cultural identity of the affected community during recovery. Our findings reveal that the slogans contribute to community pride and social cohesion thus helping individuals cope with loss. Moreover, the strong slogans present in material culture reflect the unique cultures of each locale and often are associated with local events or iconic places. Importantly, these slogans can foster disaster resilience by maintaining a collective memory of hazards that impacted communities in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biblical entreaty zakhor – Hebrew for 'remember' – has been central to the efforts of diaspora Jewish scholars, religious leaders, politicians and others to suture the suffering past to the present. The imperative to not only remember but also commemorate histories of suffering is ubiquitous among conflict-generated diasporas as well. For diaspora Croats, victim-centred themes regularly surface in identity narratives, focusing on memories of trauma and suffering after the establishment of the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia in 1945. While the manipulation of victimhood narratives and the rehabilitation of controversial histories by Croatian political elites have been examined extensively, the persistence of memories focused on suffering among diaspora Croats has received less scholarly attention. In this article, I ask why, 30 years after the end of the Homeland War and the establishment of the Croatian state, do victimhood narratives continue to resonate for diaspora Croats particularly from the Herzegovinian region of the former Yugoslavia who arrived in Canada between 1945 and 1990. What role do memory activists in Canada originating mainly from Herzegovina play in lubricating and mobilizing memories that reinforce victimhood? Finally, how does the desire for validation and legitimacy beyond diaspora communities factor into commemorations and initiatives focused on collective suffering? The focus here is on research conducted between 2019 and 2020 in Toronto when diaspora commemorations and the memory narratives that have sustained them came under increased critical scrutiny, challenging the veracity of Croatian victimhood claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to literature concerning memory and dark tourism by providing empirical evidence about the link between commemorations and the news media in a post-conflict and tourism-dependent Croatia, as well as the specific media-constructed social reality. The main focus lies on the types and media-based descriptions of commemorations. A total of 371 news articles were collected and then reviewed using a set of items grounded in theory. In addition to content, a chi-square automatic interaction detection analysis was also employed. Four commemoration types with significant peculiarities (site category, young and senior generation of visitors, and mass visits) are observed in a two-branch model. Other general characteristics of commemorations were also identified. The dominant commemoration type in Croatia are 'memorial services', (massively) visited by seniors. Young people rarely attend commemorations. If so, they mostly attend 'parades, marches, processions' taking place at authentic sites. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the purpose of an exhibit on Atlantic slavery? Does it seek to raise awareness of the trade in enslaved people, with a view to highlighting and overcoming its racist legacy, or to situate the Atlantic trade within the historical – and ongoing – continuum of slavery, or to draw attention to the role of slavery in constituting colonial modernity? Does giving this history its rightful place within the national story of France, Britain or elsewhere ultimately serve to embed racial divisions in contemporary society, or to expunge them? In other words, does a reckoning with Atlantic slavery open a path to tackling racism today? This article addresses these questions in turn. Its principal referent is the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux, set in the wider context of the city's self-image and French debates around commemorating the Atlantic slave trade. The article concludes that even though Bordeaux's slaving past is integrated into the Musée d'Aquitaine's guiding chronology, the full ramifications of slavery for colonial modernity have not been understood or represented. Beyond simplistic dichotomies of guilt and innocence, accusation and repentance, the enormous significance of coloniality and slavery in constituting European modernity, not least the Enlightenment, have yet to be grasped and assimilated in Bordeaux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the politics of the commemoration of the Kazakh famine of the 1930s by analyzing the commemoration strategies employed by visual artists in the period from 2012 until 2019. It identifies two types of art production on the topic—governmental public art, which avoids politicizing the famine and reads it as the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the Soviet period, and art projects by independent artists who call the Kazakh famine a genocide. Although these two positions seem to be ideologically opposed on a rhetorical level, the article shows that the difference in the visual language used to express these opposite political positions is not always as pronounced as one would expect, and proposes several explanations for this incoherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre has been enshrined in the collective memory of different social groups globally in various ways, while the Chinese government enforces its own memory of Tiananmen through censorship and revisionism. These result in numerous memories of Tiananmen. Through a qualitative analysis of 27 TikToks posted on 3–5 June 2022, this study examines how Tiananmen is commemorated on TikTok on Tiananmen's anniversary and what is remembered about Tiananmen. This study found that commemoration posts on TikTok remember the protests, casualties, the Chinese Communist Party leaders' role, and the historical contexts, oft using the Tank Man image. The posts also remember the remembrance and memory formation of Tiananmen. Through commemorations, memes, and humor, some posts remember the Chinese government's attempts to recreate the collective memory and other commemoration events. This is best described as meta-memories, where people remember the remembering and possess memory of the memory of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a historical exploration on how the politics of street naming in Limassol, particularly under the mayoralty of Christodoulos Sozos (1908-1912), mapped the evolution of Greek Cypriot national identity and the increasingly articulated demands for a union with Greece. This process entailed not just the replacement of former English and Ottoman names, but a deliberate selection of names that underscored Cyprus' deep-rooted historical, religious, and national ties with Greece. This initiative, undertaken during the mayoralty of Sozos, arguably represented the first instance where city streets became politically contested spaces, transforming them into cultural arenas for projecting a group's self-image and facilitating the politicization of space. These efforts incited the reaction of the British, who perceived their authority over public space being challenged, and the Turkish Cypriots, who were committed to maintaining the status quo that prevailed under Ottoman rule. More than a mere re-naming process, the act of renaming streets mirrored the city's social dynamics and signalled a silent assertion of power. Street names served not only as living testimonials to the city's history but also as markers of its evolving identity, encapsulating narratives that were both shaped by and reflective of the prevailing socio-political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Librosdelacorte.es is the property of Instituto Universitario "La Corte en Europa" - IULCE and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The crisis caused by the war in Ukraine and the crafting it triggered in Finland are the focus of this study. As Finland is a neighbouring country to Russia and has a history of gaining independence from Russia through wars, the war in Ukraine has revived the collective memory of the Finns and disturbed their feeling of peace and security. Many Finns have responded by crafting for Ukraine. The focus of this research was to find the meanings attached to their crafting during this crisis. An open call for writings on 'Craftwork in the time of crisis' was launched on the platform created in collaboration with the Craft Museum of Finland. This research analysed 40 writings openly uploaded to the platform 'Craftwork in the time of crisis' by 13 March 2023. The qualitative data were analysed by thematic analysis, and four main themes for crafting were identified: (1) practical aid, (2) symbolic influence, (3) coping and (4) reminiscence. The findings provide insights into the complex ways in which crafting can be used as a means of coping with anxiety and other challenging emotions, confirming the findings of previous studies on the importance of crafting in times of crisis. Crisis crafting is both a strategy to distance oneself from difficult situations and a mechanism to take part in such situations. Thus, crafting for war can also be a way to normalize the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Academic Social Science Studies is the property of Journal of Academic Social Science Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Kazakh national memory faced suppression during the 70 years of Soviet rule, leading to a risk of partial loss of national cultural heritage. In this period, Soviet policies often discouraged practices, such as visiting sacred places, a tradition integral to honoring ancestors and perpetuating national memory. Prior to this, during the Russian colonial period, similar policies served as a deterrent to these cultural expressions. It is important to differentiate between the Russian colonial policies pre-Soviet rule and the Soviet policies thereafter, although both had an impact on Kazakh national traditions. When Kazakhstan became independent, the lost historical memory was restored by space ideology formation and was a spontaneous “national canonization”. The initiators of the memory place renovation in the country, including sacred sites, were the holy ancestors’ and patriotic citizens’ descendants. In 2017, the state adopted the Rukhani Zhangyru program aimed at the restoration of historical places, which have the potential to national consciousness growth and national unification around living history. In this regard, the main scope of this work is to study the growth points of a new space ideology in Kazakhstan’s cultural landscape. The authors propose a classification of sacred place types, which shall contribute to the unification of all national identification layers into a single whole.

In this article we explore the text of the over 16,000 historical markers erected in the state since 1936, using GIS and corpus linguistics to determine the where, how, what, and when of how Texas memorializes its racial and ethnic groups. Unsurprisingly, our results indicate that the story of Texas is implicitly a narrative of white people. More interestingly, the term “African (Americans)” begins to be commemorated especially after the 1990s, but only in stories of community, religion, school, and children, as Texas historical markers do not to dwell on narratives of slavery, the civil rights movement, and lynchings. “Indians” and “Mexicans” in the 1930s and 1960s exemplify the most egregious case of derogatory semantics we found in the markers. As concerns racial and ethnic groups, in general they tend to be memorialized where they were historically present, whether or not such groups are still there. The analysis also reveals the increasing concentration of the markers in urban areas.

National commemorations are historical events, too. While re-imagining the past to correspond with contemporary sentiments, they are themselves open to reinterpretation by future observers. The 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising was intended to be a liminal event, paying tribute to the veterans of the revolutionary generation while recalibrating the national narrative to be more conciliatory and less militaristic. Yet, the anniversary later became neglected as one of the sparks of the conflict in Northern Ireland and subsequently served as the grand negative example of what needs to be avoided during the preparations for the Easter Rising centenary in 2016. The organisers of this centenary eventually introduced a highly diverse programme that held inclusivity at its centre. Nonetheless, with Brexit or Covid-19 in mind, one might wonder what the afterlife of the centennial mosaic of narratives will look like. Will the popular success of the event last, or will it be overshadowed or even neglected in the future?

The article analyzes the typical organization of the ceremony commemorating the Armenian genocide on April 24th in French cities with a large Armenian community such as Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Valence. These cities and their outskirts have a shared history of harboring the largest settlements of Armenian descendants in France, including a strong religious representation. In the case of Paris, Lyon and Marseille, they have strong national visibility. The article mobilizes the regional daily press and the French-speaking Armenian press – without dwelling on insignificant local nuances – to highlight the strong ritual aspects of the April 24th commemoration, its role as a potent vector of memory and as identity resource beyond mere claim. With this in mind, the commemoration of April 24th can be read as a merger between Armenian religious symbolism and the French republican symbolism inherited from the November 11th commemorations.