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Mihai Eminescu features prominently at the core of Romania's pantheon of cultural heroes. Soon after his death in 1889, Eminescu was canonized as the 'national poet.' Drawing on several strands of scholarship, this article examines the spatial politics of Eminescu's memorial cult in Romania. In particular, integrating four complete datasets of commemorative artefacts dedicated to Romania's national poet (public monuments, street names, school nomenclature, and the toponymy of cultural centres), this study charts the regional spatialization of Eminescu's memorial posterity. In accounting for the spatial differences underpinning this geography of public memory, the paper outlines two main factors: (1) Eminescu's bio-topic presence, i.e., the memorialization of his journeys within the current day territory of Romania, and (2) the cultural politics of spatial appropriation, which implied the memorialization of Eminescu in the provinces incorporated in the Romanian Kingdom after the WWI (e.g., Transylvania) as a symbolic means of Romanianizing the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of memory studies rarely deals with commercial enterprises, which, as we argue in this article, play just as prominent a role in shaping collective memories as state actors or nongovernmental organizations. The aim of our study is therefore to discuss the role of private entrepreneurs and their businesses in the context of GDR memory. We focus on the privately run GDR Museum in Berlin and its best-selling products. Through the lens of the museum store, we analyze the exhibition, an iconic eggcup, and a book on the history of the GDR that has enjoyed sustained sales over a lengthy period. By tracing the intertwined distribution chains of these memory goods, we emphasize the importance of private entrepreneurs and their networks in the current German memory culture. We argue that economic interests and developments are just as important as political decisions and public institutions regarding the memory of the communist past. Thus memory studies should also focus on enterprises of memory by analyzing business data. This poses an empirical challenge that is worth tackling, since it broadens our understanding of current memory culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world’s largest online virtual pet community, Tencent pets had accompanied numerous Chinese netizens, particularly the younger generations. It was not only their earliest “Internet memories”, but also became an integrated part of their personal life experiences, even influencing their understanding of social life. Through textual statistics, thematic analysis, and discourse analysis of 7,623 posts from Chinese BBS, this study identifies three narrative paths of memory—“mourning”, “nostalgia”, and “resistance”—which have formed around Tencent pets. People do not perceive Tencent pets merely as a “technical object”, but rather as a form of real “life”. Writing memories about Tencent pets also serves as a form of resistance against the passage of time and the fading of one’s own life course. This study contributes to a further understanding of China’s digital gaming culture, as well as enriches research on media memory and Internet history.

The article is devoted to the consideration of the images of I. Stalin and A. Hitler in historical memory. The construction of ideas about the past is based on the possibilities of media, which in the digital age are becoming limitless. With the help of media, images of the past are integrated into the agenda and actualized in the mass consciousness, and personalized figures of history are most in demand. The historical memory of modern society is largely formed on the basis of ideas about the events and heroes of the 20th century, which include the history of totalitarian regimes and the Second World War. The authors put two key figures of the last century with contradictory historical reputations at the center of their research. The article shows the importance of I. Stalin and A. Hitler for historical memory on the basis of available sociological research data. A corpus analysis of the tonality of news reports mentioning these historical figures allowed us to present the proportions of positive and negative use of their names in foreign media publications. Quantitative data made it possible to compare attitudes towards Stalin and Hitler in English-language information resources and explain certain trends in the dynamics of their representation by the nature of the news content. The study of Internet users’ search queries allowed us to supplement the idea of the directions of constructing images of the Soviet leader and the Nazi Fuhrer in historical memory. The data obtained demonstrate the high interest of the world community in ambiguous historical figures. Their images have become part of popular culture, they are used in political struggle and entertainment network discourse, which leaves an imprint on the formation of ideas about them in the media environment. The use of quantitative analysis data to study the images of I. Stalin and A. Hitler makes it possible to determine their place in the historical memory of the modern global community.

Статья посвящена сборнику Ю. В. Трифонова «Игры в сумерках», вышедшем в 1970 г. в издательстве «Физкультура и спорт». Книга вбирает в себя спортивные тексты автора, написанные с 1956 по 1968 г., что превращает ее в материал для исследования хронологических изменений не столько в поэтике писателя, сколько в его убеждениях при помощи теоретического аппарата memory studies. Рамка спортивного рассказа постепенно расширяется Трифоновым. Начиная с ностальгического повествования о детях, которые восхищаются кумирами, писатель переходит к связке спорт — воспоминание о днях молодости. Затем автор начинает фиксировать трагические изменения в восприятии спортивной культуры массами, чтобы постепенно перейти к нарративу об исторической памяти и травме вообще. Причины этих перемен заключаются в целом ряде факторов. В начале 1960-х гг. Трифонов обращается к истории собственной семьи и судьбе отца, репрессированного в 1937 г., что выводит его к теме Большого террора. Одновременно с этим он разочаровывается в «оттепельном духе» и даже в спорте замечает «машинизацию», отход от индивидуальной фигуры спортсмена в сторону коллективности. Спортивный рассказ, жанр, имеющий не самую высокую репутацию, в данном случае оказывается удобным материалом для разработки исторической оптики, в дальнейшем влияющей и на «московские повести» автора.

The article is focused on the sociological analysis of the project “Radiant city” of Elena Sharganova, resident of the tenth season of Open Studios at the Center of Contemporary Art Winzavod (2023/24), that is devoted to the artist’s hometown — Nelidovo — and consists of a series of textile collages, made with mixed media techniques including photo printing, cyanotype, machine seam, hand embroidery. Sociological conceptualization of the project is made based on the interview with the artist, analysis of archive publications kindly provided by the artist, and researches on social memory and industrial cities. Based on the interpretation of collages as spaces of representation in terms of Henri Lefebvre that represent a zone of experience, in which images and symbols fill in physical space and knowledge about it, the article shows that the “Radiant city” is the artist’s reflections on Nelidovo’s unrealized development trajectories and destinies of small industrial cities in general. There are three key topics raised by the artist in this project: disappointment in communism and nostalgia for the past, the problem of small industrial cities’ development, interrelation of collective and individual memory. Elena Sharganova’s project significance is defined by experiments with art mediums and a research approach that brings together art and social issues.

I define territory as embodied, relational, processual, and imaginative: power enacted upon and through place. In the following article, I use this generative definition of territory as a lens to interrogate how memory becomes placed and bounded at Somerset Place, a historic plantation site in North Carolina. Through archival research into the negotiations between two state government agencies on the legal status of Somerset Place between 1939-1965, as well as analysis of the gendered and racialized criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, I uncover how historic space was defined against recreational space – not only in the creation of Somerset Place, but in the heritage boom of the mid-twentieth century more broadly. In addition, by understanding territory as the historicized and ongoing enactment of power upon and through place, I reveal how formal and informal territories of public memory and public space are continuously defined, negotiated, and claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses reconstructions of the 1919 German LGBTQ+ rights film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) to consider the meaning of the Weimar Republic. It surveys Weimar's historiography, memorialization efforts, public commemorations, museums, and film reconstruction, drawing connections between these fields. The film as an incomplete document becomes a metaphor for incomplete histories. As such, it offers suggestions for engaging with fragmentary pasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the history and symbolism of the Derafsh-e kāviyān, the imperial flag of pre-Islamic Iran. It explores how the flag has evolved over time, from being a symbol of imperial authority to representing Iranian heritage and resistance against foreign rule. The article also discusses how the flag has been adopted by other cultures, such as Tajikistan and Kurdish nationalists. It emphasizes the adaptability of cultural symbols in shaping collective memory and identity. [Extracted from the article]

The paper offers a case study of György Konrád, a leading intellectual from post-Communist eastern Europe, who was arguably the most internationally visible and influential former dissident—or post-dissident—from Hungary after 1989. The paper introduces the biography and intellectual activities of Konrád, which stretched from the periphery of interwar Hungary to post–Cold War international fame, and it focuses on his post-1989 public interventions and the reception of his key ideas. The main question it poses is: "How did Konrád wield his post-dissident moral and political authority, and with what effects?" To answer this overarching question, I explore Konrád's key contributions as a public intellectual in post-Communist Hungary and analyze his high-profile involvement in international discussions via prominent interviews, debate participations, and appearances in various documentaries. I also provide an overview of the scholarly reception of his most influential ideas. The paper concludes that by recurrently dissenting from more mainstream intellectual opinions, at times even those shared in his own liberal milieu, Konrád simultaneously employed and deflected his political and moral authority. More concretely, I show how Konrád oscillated between universalistic and civilizational discourses and between a generous spirit of openness and profound personal fears when his post-dissident authority made his voice so widely audible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores commemorative plaques at former fascist concentration camps in Italy, focusing on how they reflect the memory of the Holocaust. Using lexical analysis to rank word frequency, the study identifies four narrative modes: Culpabilisation, Heroisation, Victimisation, and Redemption. Before the establishment of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2000, plaques predominantly highlighted the Italian Resistance against Nazis, with minimal acknowledgement of the Holocaust. Although there has been a shift towards recognising the Holocaust since Law 211, the Resistance narrative remains central. Fascism is rarely mentioned, indicating a tendency to downplay Italy's fascist past and its Nazi alliance. While these plaques meet legal requirements for remembrance, they often lack historical accuracy, focus on local events, and prioritise heroism over the recognition of atrocities and their perpetrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in 2007, the author spent a decade researching the flight of European Holocaust refugees into the Soviet interior, Central Asia, and the Middle East. She traveled to Russia, Uzbekistan, Poland, and Israel, and – via an intermediary – Iran. She conducted interviews in Syktyvkar, Samarqand and other places where descendants of former refugees and locals who were in contact with them now live. She also unearthed testimonies and interviews that were conducted with refugees and locals in the 1940s. The result was a multi-faceted mosaic that complicates commonly held views about the relationship between east and west, empire and native, migrant and the nation-state. The article discusses the challenge this research poses for some of the basic assumptions of canonical postcolonial theory and argues for fine-tuning the latter's often binary perspective between the west and the Other by combining it with the sociological insights of the field of memory studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the cultural contexts of the phenomenon of popular genealogy in contemporary Poland. The author looks at the external and internal factors shaping the phenomenon of Polish genealogical research and discusses the results of her research conducted as part of the project ‘Between the Great History and Small Histories. Popular Genealogy in Present-day Poland’. As an introduction to the issue, the author gave an overview of the history of amateur genealogy in Poland against the background of social and cultural changes. She also drew attention to the phenomenon of so-called cybergenealogy, i.e. the effect of the development of information technologies and social media on the popularity of genealogy and the ways in which Poles practice it, paying attention to the problem of memory and collective imagination. The main question posed by the author is: what can we deduce about the condition of contemporary Polish collective memory from community genealogical practices? This is illustrated by an analysis of the discourse in the Genealodzy PL discussion group on Facebook. The article also includes reflections from case study research on individual genealogical practices.

This paper reexamines the public memory of Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune. In 1938, Bethune traveled to China to serve at the communist front and to treat soldiers fighting against the invading Japanese army. Throughout China, Bethune is a household name and a communist icon. Back in Canada, however, his name does not evoke the same ubiquity. While Canadians remembered Bethune through biographies, a film, statues, and a small museum, his story in the Anglophone world is confined primarily to the telling of distant history. To explain Bethune's greater notoriety and public presence in China, this essay first turns our attention to Chinese sources that mythologized Bethune's death in 1939. The essay then revisits Chinese propaganda that established Bethune as a lasting political symbol during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. These national efforts show how a volunteer surgeon such as Bethune became such an important figure in a remote foreign country. China's Communist Party turned Bethune's death into a political event to rally support for their war of resistance against Japan. Later, during the tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong used Bethune to symbolize unwavering service and loyalty to leader and party. This essay utilizes primary materials in McGill's Osler Library and commentary from the field of memory studies to contextualize Bethune and to situate him within the broader narrative of political education that arose in China during the Cultural Revolution. A layered interpretation of Bethune — as doctor, martyr, and symbolic hero — slowly emerges. Political forces in China transformed his memory into legacy and carry this complicated figure into the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three popular songs of enormous cultural significance are 'In My Life', 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever', all released by the Beatles in the 1960s and all set in the same part of Liverpool. In an original investigation, this article looks into the growth of that part of the city from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1950s, examining the changes to the landscape. This was as the initially rural environment gave way to a typical twentieth-century townscape of houses, roads, parks and schools. The memories of people who resided there are related and these along with old maps, photographs, newspaper articles and census details are examined to give a sense of the lived-in location that inspired the lyrics of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. The phenomenon of palimpsest – ancient features slightly visible underneath modern ones – is applied to this study of the location and a new concept of inverse palimpsest – the old consciously superimposed on the new – is put forward in a novel approach to landscape analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory is the topic of many modern engagements with antiquity, and it is also the modus operandi of many modern adaptations of antiquity, driven and shaped by the ever-changing ways in which 'the classics' are conceptualised within different time-periods and socio-cultural contexts. Popular awareness of classical materials, their socio-economic status, how famous characters and stories are perpetuated through mnemonic adaptation – these are important factors of memory-driven reception that deserve to be investigated as part of classical reception studies. In this article, we thus propose ways in which interdisciplinary connections between memory studies and classical reception studies can be established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Berichte zur Wissenschafts-Geschichte is the property of Wiley-Blackwell 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.)

Copyright of Berichte zur Wissenschafts-Geschichte is the property of Wiley-Blackwell 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.)

Copyright of Berichte zur Wissenschafts-Geschichte is the property of Wiley-Blackwell 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.)

Former asylums are often significant heritage sites for their architecture and what they can tell us about mental health care practices. One example is the historic Mayday Hills asylum in Beechworth, Victoria, Australia. Built in Italianate style and set in extensive grounds, it is under National Trust protection for its heritage and historical significance. In this article, we outline the creation of a pilot online virtual tour of Mayday Hills and the nearby Beechworth Cemetery. We used curation as a methodology, informed by the concept of crystallisation. Innovative digital imagery was crafted through drone footage and virtual technology. The website includes narratives and reminiscences from former staff and others associated with the institution, along with a blog written by the research team. Maydayhills.org.au demonstrates the feasibility of using virtual technology to depict how mental illness was once treated in Australia. The website is available to anyone unable to travel to Beechworth and to enrich the experience of those visiting in person. This online digital space is now essential for the preservation of history, memories and material culture given that many original buildings are being repurposed. It complements the built and natural environment of Mayday Hills asylum and Beechworth Cemetery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors adopting socio-technical frameworks to study energy transitions argue that individual behavioural change and the uptake of social and technological innovations on higher-level scales are both imperative for sustainability transitions to come about. However, the way individuals are embedded in the larger system has remained largely unclear. To better understand individual embedment in energy transitions, this paper enriches sustainability transition research with the insights of memory studies. During energy transitions, social actors that enact these transitions change their identity. A core premise of memory studies is that individual and collective remembering cannot do without each other in the constitution of identity. To illustrate the role of memory in energy transitions, this paper conducts a historical case study of the role of housewives in the energy transition to gas and electricity in the Dutch household. By adopting a narrative approach, the historical narratives across the Monthly Magazine of the Dutch Association for Housewives (NVvH), published between 1913 and 1942, are explored. The results show how the master narrative prescribed the guiding principles of the historical narratives that emerged in the energy discourse. However, as part of the flexible nature of memory, a varied 'menu of stories' came forward that enabled individuals to identify with different historical narratives, incorporating differing energy sources and drawing on the transformative nature of memory by imagining different energy futures. It is concluded that individual agency in energy transitions moves beyond choices of use and consumption. It rests in the individuals' ability to identify with a historical narrative that adheres to the way the individual makes sense of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how noncombatants who lived in the Central Black Earth Region of the Soviet Union during the Soviet-German War (1941–45) remembered their experience of combat and Axis occupation seventy years after the last shots were fired. Based on interviews with over a dozen individuals who were children and adolescents during the war, this study finds that despite an overwhelming and annually celebrated official narrative of the war, the interviewees discuss the war from only their own horizon of observation. With a focus on themes common to all the interviewees (family, childhood, and labor), this essay stresses the fact that while modern warfare is a national (or international) phenomenon, it is always experienced locally by combatants and noncombatants alike. Such an examination highlights the complexity of the experience of warfare and how this complexity is demonstrated in how personal memory of the event diverges from official memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renowned Estonian novelist Karl Ristikivi published a gothic short story titled Luige­laul (“Swansong”) in 1968, drawing inspiration from a true event from the Baltic Middle Ages. In 1428, Goswin von Aschenberg, a Vogt of the Teutonic Order stationed at Grobiņa Castle in the south-western corner of present-day Latvia, perpetrated the murder of Livonian bishops’ envoys en route to Rome to denounce the Order’s tyranny. The precise source of Ristikivi’s inspiration remains obscure. This article endeavours to trace the massacre on Lake Liepāja as a motif in Baltic German and Estonian fiction, exploring its significance as a lieu de mémoire. The historical episode gained widespread recognition through the publication of the famous Wandalia by Albertus Krantz in 1519. Baltic Enlightenment authors (Arndt, Bergmann, Merkel, Küttner) utilized it in their general polemics against medieval feudal barbarism. By the nineteenth century, the event had firmly entrenched itself in the collective understanding of the Livonian Middle Ages. Baltic German writers crafted ballads (Andrejanoff, Hirschheydt) and light fiction (Schneider) around the incident. In 1866 the first literary adaptation of the massacre on Lake Liepāja emerged as a sentimental novella in Estonian, akin to the tales of Genevieve of Brabant and Robinson Crusoe popular among Estonian readers at the time. Although the event took place relatively far from Estonia, it remained embedded in the memory of Estonian readers throughout the first half of the twentieth century, primarily through sporadic newspaper articles as well as history textbooks. Thus, the massacre on Lake Liepāja provides a good example of the intertwined cultural memories of Estonians and Baltic Germans. While these cultural memories have often been perceived as conflicting or, at best, mutually unaware, there are notable instances of overlap and consensus that warrant further exploration and consideration in future research.

Introduction. The importance of exploring the specificity of shaping the historical memory among young people is due to the fact that it is this age that is crucial in the formation of worldview attitudes and civic identity. In modern geopolitical conditions, when the falsification of historical events of Russia's past takes place, the analysis of the factors of studentsʼ involvement in the space of historical practices and narratives that influence the formation of their historical memory is especially important. The aim of the article is to measure the level of students' involvement in the space of historical practices and narratives on the basis of quantitative and qualitative sociological research data; to identify the factors influencing the historical memory of student youth in the Republic of Mordovia. Materials and Methods. The empirical basis of the study constituted the findings derived from 20 semi-structured interviews with young people between 18 and 25 years old, as well as the results of an online survey held among university and secondary educational institutions learners in the Republic of Mordovia (n = 700). Multistage composite sampling. Results. Based on cluster analysis, three groups of student youth were identified according to the level of involvement in the space of historical practices and narratives. The relationship between belonging to a specific cluster and socio-demographic factors is presented: gender, level of education and place of residence turned out to be significant. Among the factors influencing the level of involvement in historical practices and narratives are cognitive interest in history, family memories, and active use of media. It has been established that the significance of these factors in shaping the historical memory of young people may vary. The most significant factors are historical education (at secondary school, vocational education institution, university), the role of teacher as a mediator of historical knowledge, as well as the continuity and depth of family memory. Discussion and Conclusion. The results of the study determine the factors of student youth involvement in the space of historical practices and narratives and supplement the sociological understanding of the processes of constructing the historical memory. The materials of the article may be of interest to specialists engaged in patriotic education, historical education of youth, practitioners involved in the development of youth policy.

The article is devoted to the problem of transformation of historical memory in the context of digitalization. The aim of the article is to make a critical analysis of the “cancel culture” as one of the tools for the formation and transmission of historical identity in digital space and beyond. The new media space from where the phenomenon of cancel culture originated is chosen as the research field. The objective of the article is then to bring the conceptual subjects of memory studies and media theory closer together. New media differ significantly from traditional media, and these differences determine the change in discursive rules and consequently imply a reorganization of the discursive space. The vertical paternalistic structure of discourse gives way to a horizontal rhizomatic structure, while the rigid author-reader opposition breaks down. The change in discursive rules entails a change of discursive practices. The changes affect not only discursive but also social space, including the space of historical memory. The digitalization of the past entails new forms of memory existence. At the same time, some traditional functions, such as identity formation, are preserved. New media becomes a platform for identity formation, providing opportunities for the construction and constant reassembly of identities. The article considers “cancel culture” as a marker of this reassembly. It is viewed both as a mode of manifestation and as a source of identity. The critical analysis highlights both the negative and positive characteristics of the phenomenon, explaining its paradoxicality and regularity in the new reality.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) social movement has emerged as a prominent challenge to the principles and values of contemporary societies. Concurrently, the practices of cancel culture extend to the historical past as well. The primary objective of this article is to conduct a comparative analysis of forms of historical forgetting and figures of silence within the commemorative practices of BLM, as depicted in media discourses across the English-speaking countries. Making use of the critical discourse analysis methodology of N. Fairclough and S. Jäger, this study analyzes the discursive aspects of monument cancellations and key figures of silence in the media portrayal of BLM commemorative practices in the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia. The research reveals that, despite the unique characteristics of media discourses in Australia and Canada, particularly concerning the memory of indigenous peoples, the canceling practices in the countries examined exhibit similar features. These include general forms of oblivion associated with the formation of a new identity, as outlined by P. Connerton, and the use of forgetting as a weapon, as described by A. Assmann, in the quest for symbolic capital. This study identifies and examines key figures of silence within BLM as a community of memory, including a-historical perspective of colonial era events, disproportionate focus on selected cancellation facts, invocation of collective guilt, silence over morally questionable traits of the oppressed, absence of a constructive program linking past and future, and unchecked emotional expression regarding the past.

The article addresses the issue of historical memory transformation in the digital era. Its aim is to critically analyze the “cancel culture” as a tool for shaping and transmitting historical identity in the digital realm and beyond. The realm of new media where the cancel culture phenomenon emerged, is selected as the field of research. Consequently, the article seeks to bridge conceptual topics in memory studies with media theory. New media exhibit significant differences from traditional media, influencing a shift in discursive rules and leading to the reorganization of discursive spaces. The traditional vertical paternalistic discourse structure is replaced by a horizontal, rhizomatic one, and the rigid dichotomy between the author and the reader dissipates. These shifts in discursive rules bring about changes in discursive practices, impacting not only discourse itself but also the broader social fabric, including the realm of historical memory. Digitalization introduces novel forms of memory existence while retaining some traditional functions like identity formation. New media serve as platforms for identity formation, offering opportunities for constructing and continuously reassembling identities. This article views “cancel culture” as a symbol of this reassembly, acting both as a mode of expression and a source of identity. The critical analysis underscores both the negative and positive aspects of cancel culture, elucidating its paradoxical nature and frequency in contemporary reality.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of military and bureaucracy on Pakistan's politics by using politics of memory and colonialism as theoretical frameworks to interpret both historical as well as contemporary trajectories. This research seeks to discover how colonial legacies continue to influence contemporary practices of democracy by examining the effects of electoral rigging and military interventions on political stability. Pakistan, despite having some features of democracy, can best be declared a hybrid state where the core institutions like armed forces and bureaucracy predominantly shape and reshape the political and democratic discourse of both the state and the society. On the problems and challenges of hybrid democracy in Pakistan, this research is of the view that the Pakistani political system and democracy have not been decolonized since its inception in 1947. It is therefore strongly recommended that Pakistan should decolonize its political system to establish effective democratic infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1789, during the outset of the French Revolution, Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) embarked on a journey traversing Germany, Switzerland, and France. His experiences were later crystallized into a two-volume travelogue, Labyrinten , published between 1792 and 1793. In a similar vein, in 1793, Adam Moltke (1765–1843), a close friend of Baggesen, visited the besieged city of Mainz and subsequently chronicled his experiences in Reise nach Maynz (1794), also a two-volume work. Both authors, profoundly impacted by their travels, expressed a compulsion to write as an outlet. Intriguingly, their texts employ alimentary and metabolic metaphors to depict the act of experiencing as a form of ingestion, where impressions are consumed, assimilated, and eventually transformed into written narrative. This portrayal of memory and writing as a bodily process sharply diverges from the classical ideals of artistic and literary purity. This article argues that these alimentary and metabolic metaphors represent a subversive poetics, challenging conventional literary norms and offering a novel perspective on the interplay between human experience, bodily processes, and literary creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are memory studies part of Latin American thought? In this article we will seek to demonstrate that memory studies constitute sources for Latin American thought of the 20th century, as they seek to problematize the notion of Latin American identity based on analysis of the social ways of remembering state violence and its consequences in the configuration of the Latin American identity. To do so, we will take the Condor Plan as the problematic axis, as an integral and regional process, and its subsequent memorial reconstruction. In this work we will analyze three volumes of the collection Repression Memories that deepen the study on identities and ways of remembering: Commemorations: disputes on "unhappy" dates (Jelin 2002); Local struggles, communities and identities (del Pino, Jelin 2003); Monuments, memorials and land marks (Jelin and Langland 2003). These volumes will be compared and analyzed based on bibliographic guidelines regarding Latin American thought. Based on this problem, we will seek to answer the initial question, proposing that memory studies are sources of Latin American thought since they produce inputs to answer and attend to some of the central questions of this thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how Taiwan and Spain have confronted their traumatic pasts under dictatorships and how 21st-century films have served as tools for preserving and transmitting collective memory, as well as constructing national identity. Despite peaceful democratic transitions in both na- tions, there are still open wounds, particularly regarding victims of state violence and the recovery of memory. We establish a dialogue between Spain and Taiwan, revealing the need for further sociopoliti- cal progress. Additionally, the power of cinema to generate awareness and social and academic interest in collective memory is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renowned Estonian novelist Karl Ristikivi published a gothic short story titled Luigelaul ("Swansong") in 1968, drawing inspiration from a true event from the Baltic Middle Ages. In 1428, Goswin von Aschenberg, a Vogt of the Teutonic Order stationed at Grobiņa Castle in the south-western corner of present-day Latvia, perpetrated the murder of Livonian bishops' envoys en route to Rome to denounce the Order's tyranny. The precise source of Ristikivi's inspiration remains obscure. This article endeavours to trace the massacre on Lake Liepāja as a motif in Baltic German and Estonian fiction, exploring its significance as a lieu de mémoire. The historical episode gained widespread recognition through the publication of the famous Wandalia by Albertus Krantz in 1519. Baltic Enlightenment authors (Arndt, Bergmann, Merkel, Küttner) utilized it in their general polemics against medieval feudal barbarism. By the nineteenth century, the event had firmly entrenched itself in the collective understanding of the Livonian Middle Ages. Baltic German writers crafted ballads (Andrejanoff, Hirschheydt) and light fiction (Schneider) around the incident. In 1866 the first literary adaptation of the massacre on Lake Liepāja emerged as a sentimental novella in Estonian, akin to the tales of Genevieve of Brabant and Robinson Crusoe popular among Estonian readers at the time. Although the event took place relatively far from Estonia, it remained embedded in the memory of Estonian readers throughout the first half of the twentieth century, primarily through sporadic newspaper articles as well as history textbooks. Thus, the massacre on Lake Liepāja provides a good example of the intertwined cultural memories of Estonians and Baltic Germans. While these cultural memories have often been perceived as conflicting or, at best, mutually unaware, there are notable instances of overlap and consensus that warrant further exploration and consideration in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the interdisciplinary fields of memory and historical justice studies by analyzing one, particularly troublesome kind of competitive comparison that sometimes happens in memory politics in the so-called age of apology. The article calls this kind of competitive comparison, "saming". Saming involves the attempt, via far-fetched or otherwise wrongheaded comparison, to exploit the recognition of some well-known case of historical injustice. Further, saming involves pursuing this comparison in ways that both trivialize the original injustice and undermine the framework from which the recognition of that injustice derives. The article develops its arguments and analysis by studying Budapest's House of Terror museum and two Canadian redress campaigns, which sought historical recognition for the wartime internments of persons of Italian and Ukrainian ancestry, respectively. Saming is a recurrent problem, ubiquitous and probably inevitable in memory politics because the recognition of historical injustice brings with it unavoidable and indeed often valuable incentives to comparison. Thus, the overall aim of this article is to analyze the threat of saming in order to better defend the cause of comparison in introspective collective remembrance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following interviews were conducted during the field work of my doctoral thesis, funded by the University of Reading. Interviews were conducted face to face in the summer of 2019 in Bizkaia. Both interviewees were over 90 years old when interviewed and lived through the state repression suffered under Franco's regime following their childhood exile. The fear that they endured remained latent. These excerpts are parts of interviews relating to their personal experience of childhood exile in the context of the Spanish Civil War. When the war intensified on the northern front with the bombing of the civilian population (specifically the bombings of Otxandio in July 1936 and Gernika in April 1937), the Basque Government of the Second Spanish Republic organized the so-called 'expediciones infantiles' ('childhood expeditions') for the evacuation of children. These first-person testimonies show how these children lived their experience of exile as refugees and their subsequent integration into Franco's Spain, a hostile space for them, as the evacuated children were considered traitors, 'los hijos de los rojos' ('the children of Reds'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The ways of preserving and transferring the memory of the Holocaust committed in Yugoslavia in general, and especially within the German military-occupation zone "Serbia", have been the subject of analysis by numerous research projects. Most of the mentioned projects studied the period from the end of Second World War, until the first decade of the XXI century, while a negligible number of scholars attempted to theoretically frame the researched phenomenon. For this reason, the article tries to, through the analysis of the Holocaust history politics practiced by the Republic of Serbia during the period from 1945 to 2020, update the previous research on this topic as well as point out the stages in the mentioned politics genesis in order to conceptually frame them and offer for them preliminary explanations. Looking at the Holocaust history politics of the Republic of Serbia, i.e. its institutional practices, through the theoretical framework of memory studies, the research findings are based on the content analysis of documents published by prominent institutional actors during the aforementioned period. In particular, the documents and publications of the Federal Association of Fighters of the National Liberation War (SUBNOR), the Museum of Genocide Victims and the "Staro Sajmište" Memorial Center are analyzed, as well as documents from other relevant bodies and state institutions. Based on the available documents analysis and a review of scientific literature, the paper advocates the thesis of the existence of three phases within the Serbia's Holocaust history politics genesis, which are characterized by special tendencies (conditioned by social frameworks) when it comes to preserving and transferring the memory of the genocide committed against the Jewish communities of the German military-occupation zone "Serbia". The first phase represents the period 1945-1991 when the abstraction and leveling of the Holocaust victims is the norm. The second phase covers the period 1991-2011, during which the explicit naming of Holocaust victims occurs, but also their intertwining with Serbian and Roma victims. During the third phase (2011-2020), the explicit naming of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust as well as the Roma victims of Samudaripen persists, on the one hand, while at the same time striving for their (institutional) separation from the victims of the genocide committed against the Serbian people. The political landscape has significantly influenced how this history is remembered and commemorated, often reflecting broader regional and global contexts as well as their respective narratives about the Holocaust.

In On Media Memory; Collective Memory in New Media Age, cultural memory is described as “a version of past, defined and negotiated through changing socio-political power circumstances and agendas" (qtd. in Bosh TE 3). The popular entertainment of every age is obliged to incorporate elements of cultural memory in it to remain popular. The paper seeks to interrogate the role played by the integration of cultural memory in the popular American science fiction web series, Stranger Things, and the latest production of Marvel Cinematic Universe, Miss Marvel. The Stranger Things series, written and directed by the Duffer brothers is set in the mid-1980s. The age is recreated through certain elements that constitute cultural memory. They are placed within the context of the Ukraine crisis which urgently necessitates anti-Russian narratives in American popular entertainment. Miss Marvel appeared as a fresh wind in MCU, questioning the collective mistrust towards the Pakistani Muslim community and addressing the scars of partition as well as migration in third-generation Pakistani-Americans. The two web series featured on Netflix and Disney Hotstar are compared and contrasted to elucidate how popular entertainment can act as a soft power for the retention and deconstruction of cultural memory.

Oonya Kempadoo, a Caribbean novelist of mixed racial and cultural heritage, has harnessed the power of memory in her novels. Her fresh approach and representation of Caribbean life provoke a sense of familiarity even in the most distanced reader, owing to the inclusion of true-to-life representations of socio-cultural experiences. The facets of diversity, socio- political relations, familial ties, and psychological implications are explored in the novels. In this paper, the study will focus on the instances of collective cultural memory, individual memory, material memory, and socio-cultural memories surrounding displacement in All Decent Animals (2013) and Buxton Spice (1998). Existing at the intersection of diverse, melismatic ethnic groups, the novels under consideration pulsate with dynamic portrayals of characters, experiences, and events. The microcosmic representation of multiculturalism as observed in the novels shall also be examined through the lens of memory studies, while also exploring the ways that memory manifests itself as a palpable construct.

Badania nad twórczością Brunona Schulza, ze względu na brak ciągłości w zapiskach autobiograficznych, zaginioną korespondencję czy wreszcie nawet zaginione dzieła, nie od dziś przysparzają problemów badacz(k)om. Kompletne archiwum Schulza nie istnieje. Twórca, którego historia nie dysponuje kopią zapasową w postaci multimedialnych archiwów, zmienia się zatem w medialny byt, którego los jest nierozerwalnie związany z gestem tworzenia narracji. W ciągu ostatnich lat szczególnie dominującą narracją stała się ta wiążąca twórczość i całe życie Schulza z dyskursami kultury pamięci poświęconej Zagładzie. Poszukując znaczenia archiwum w kontekście interpretacji dzieł pisarza i dyskursów biograficznych, autorka artykułu szuka odpowiedzi na pytanie dotyczące znaczenia luk w biografii Schulza i ich udziału w tworzeniu mitu pisarza poprzez referencje do teorii mediów i archiwistyki. Porównując biograficzne trendy z tymi dominującymi polską kulturę pamięci, tekst oferuje uaktualnione spojrzenie na twórczość Schulza oraz na sposoby pisania o pisarzach dwudziestolecia międzywojennego. Wykorzystując warsztat metodologiczny charakterystyczny dla badań medioznawczych, tekst udowadnia zasadność pozycjonowania prozy Schulza na szerszym socjopolitycznym i kulturowym tle Galicji początku XX wieku. Poprzez ponowną analizę takich tekstów, jak Wiosna czy Druga jesień, artykuł ukazuje twórczość pisarza jako multimedialne i komunikacyjne archiwum, którego jedną z płaszczyzn (istotnych dla prawidłowej interpretacji) jest ewokowanie kontekstów kulturowych związanych z dokładnie określonym czasem i przestrzenią.

During the first decades of the 20th century, many European intellectuals were developing negative responses to modernity. Hermann Hesse was aware of the moral and social difficulties plaguing Europe at that time and dealt with these problems in his writing. Despite being a German author, he is well read even today, and his characters' quests and journeys of self-discovery captivate young people worldwide. This study aims to bring out the relevance of Hesse by analysing the historiography of the studies on Hesse's works and interrogating the significance of different perspectives on him, which will open doors for future studies in health humanities and memory studies. The authors systematically analyse 100 studies on Hesse and his works from journals indexed in the Web of Science. It is concluded that Hesse’s literary world, comprised of novels, poems, and autobiographical reflections, is deeper and bigger than what has been discovered.