Avsnitt
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From the 9/11 to the Salem witch trials memorial, University of Texas at Dallas art historian Erika Doss argues that we are living in an age of memorial mania. In her book Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, Erika Doss explains how memorials embody and allow for the public expression of emotions such as grief, fear, gratitude, shame and anger. What are the benefits and drawbacks of today’s memorial culture and what does it reveal about America and Americans? Find out on the May 7th episode of Realms of Memory.
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It took nearly fifty years before a single dollar was spent on commemorating Emmett Till in the state of Mississippi where he was brutally murdered in August 1955. Dave Tell, University of Kansas Professor and author of Remembering Emmett Till, argues that we can’t understand the remembering and forgetting of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta where he died without considering the natural and built environment. From the Tallahatchie River where the fourteen-year-old boy’s body was sunk to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market where the story was set in motion, the buildings and natural features of the Mississippi Delta have had a profound impact on memory of Emmett Till.
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In August 1955 Emmett Till was abducted from his uncle’s home, tortured, shot, bound by barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and sunk in the Tallahatchie River. The outrage triggered by the photo of the mangled remains of the fourteen-year-old boy’s body in the open cassette at the funeral in Till’s native Chicago rallied many to the cause of the nascent civil rights movement. University of Kansas Professor Dave Tell, author of Remembering Emmett Till, helps us understand the forces that broke the decades long silence in the Mississippi Delta where the murder took place. The built and natural environment of the Delta, Tell argues, has had a profound influence on the memory and legacy of the murder. For my full conversation with Dave Tell, tune into the April 2nd episode of Realms of Memory.
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Beginning in 1880s Africans Americans became the targets of a lynching craze that claimed thousands of lives. In Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lyching on Black Culture and Memory, University of Oklahoma historian Karlos K. Hill argues that narratives are key to understanding not just what drove the lynching craze but how African Americans responded. It was the narrative of the black beast rapist that fueled and justified the lyching mania. African American activists and cultural actors responded with their own victimization and consoling narrative to galvanize public support and to offer examples of courage and heroism to inspire future generations. Victimization and consoling narratives were both examples of how African Americans found usable pasts to fight against racial violence and injustice.
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Dehumanizing narratives of black male bodies drove the lynching epidemic that claimed thousands of African American lives between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Dr. Karlos K. Hill, author of Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory, explains how African American political and cultural actors fought back against this reign of terror with their own humanizing and heroic narratives of lynched black bodies. Remembering lynched black bodies in ways that encouraged empathy or instilled sentiments pride was a means of finding empowering usable pasts during one of the darkest chapters in American history.
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Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era. How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)? In what ways were the therapeutic claims of the ECCC overblown and destined to disappoint? How did the Cambodian government use the ECCC to support its own self-serving reading of the past? What important memory work did NGOs take on that is often forgotten because of the tendency to focus exclusively on prominent institutions such as the ECCC? To answer these questions and more listen to University of Bath sociologist Pete Manning, author of Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia: Beyond the Extraordinary Chambers.
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Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era. How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)? In what ways were the therapeutic claims of the ECCC overblown and destined to disappoint? How did the Cambodian government use the ECCC to support its own self-serving reading of the past? What important memory work did NGOs take on that is often forgotten because of the tendency to focus exclusively on prominent institutions such as the ECCC? To answer these questions and more listen to the February 6th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast featuring Dr. Pete Manning, author of Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia: Beyond the Extraordinary Chambers.
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The system of enforced prostitution by the Japanese military went unpunished and unexamined for decades after the Asia-Pacific War. International recognition only began in 1991 when Korean survivor Kim Hak-sun spoke out in graphic detail about her dark past. In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia, University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor tells the story of the transnational struggle for recognition and redress for and by the women of East and Southeast Asia. Focusing on the less studied case of Indonesia, she points out how the sexual abuse and exploitation of Indonesian woman began during the Dutch colonial era. She reveals how collaboration with the Japanese, sentiments of shame, and Cold War political and economic pressures favored the silencing of this past.
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During the Asia-Pacific War the Japanese military forced thousands of women across East and Southeast Asia into a brutal system of organized prostitution. The label of “comfort women” only masks the true reality of this massive human rights crime that went largely unpunished for decades after the war. Most attention to this history has focused on Korea and Japan where the movement for redress began earliest. Find out how the struggle for recognition and redress unfolded in Indonesia on the January 2nd episode of the Realms of Memory podcast. Listen to University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor, author of Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia.
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The May 1980 clash between government forces and the people of Gwangju marks a key turning point toward democracy in South Korea. The nation’s sixth largest city, the citizens of Gwangju suffered immeasurably for the uprising. The city lost development support and its citizens were cast as traitors and North Korean sympathizers. The decision to select Gwangju to host a major international art exhibition, or what became known as the Gwangju Biennale, was an effort to address the injustices of the past. Author of The Cultural Politics of Urban Development in South Korea: Art, Memory and Urban Boosterism in Gwangju, HaeRan Shin discusses the challenge of reconciling urban development with the memory of the Gwangju Uprising.
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The April 2014 Sewol ferry disaster is an all too familiar South Korean tragedy. Corruption, deceit, greed, and failed regulations and oversight cost nearly three hundred lives—most of whom were high school students on a trip to Jeju Island, a popular resort destination. Seoul National University Professor HaeRan Shin explains how the Sewol ferry disaster has become a site of remembering and forgetting. She reveals how economic interests worked against efforts to memorialize the tragedy. Lastly, she notes how opponents tried to discredit the memorialization project by associating it with memory activists from Gwangju and the May 18th Gwangju massacre.
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The military regime, which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, murdered hundreds and tortured thousands more perceived enemies of the state. How is it possible that this period of political repression, censorship, and state sponsored terror is now remembered nostalgically by many Brazilians? How did Jair Bolsonaro harness this nostalgia to win the 2018 presidential elections? Once in power, how did Bolsonaro frame the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of the memory of dictatorship with catastrophic consequences for Brazil? Leda Balbino, researcher, journalist, and deputy editor at the foreign desk of O Globo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, examines these and other questions in her recent book, Digital Memory in Brazil: A Fragmented and Elastic Negationist Remembrance of the Dictatorship.
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In 1964 the military seized power in Brazil and ruled the country for the next 21 years. During this period the military used censorship, torture, and murder to silence its critics and maintain its grip on power. How did Jair Bolsonaro use the memory of this past to catapult himself to the presidency? How did Bolsonaro’s manipulation of the memory of dictatorship have catastrophic consequences for Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic? For answers to these questions and more, listen to the November 7th episode of the Realms of Memory featuring deputy editor Leda Balbino, from Brazil’s O Globo newspaper. We’ll be discussing her recent book Digital Memory in Brazil: A Fragmented and Elastic Negationist Remembrance of the Dictatorship.
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In the face of rising nationalism and denialism about crimes committed during the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia, memory activists in Serbia have been struggling to confront the past. For the last two decades Dr. Orli Fridman, from the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) in Belgrade, has made memory activism in Serbia and the wider region of the former Yugusolavia the focus of her research. Find out how several generations of memory activists have taken to the streets and on-line digital platforms to fight against denial, to preserve and communicate memories of the wars of the 1990s, and to build solidarity, compassion, and empathy in the region. Listen to my conversation with Dr. Orli Fridman about her recent book Memory Activism and Digital Memory Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories.
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How do memory politics in Serbia shape the memories of the wars in Yugoslavia? What role do memory activists play in this process and what practices and claims do they put forward? Dr. Orli Fridman, a professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) in Belgrade, has spent the past two decades looking at these questions. Author of Memory Activism and Digital Memory Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories, Orli Fridman will be the featured guest of the October 3rd episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.
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Much of the focus on the memory of the partition of British India has been on the region of the Punjab. King’s College London Professor Ananya Kabir is interested in the repercussions of partition for the region of Bengal where she has ancestral ties. How did cultural actors, from archeologists and artists to singers and novelists, use their craft to shape and assess the memories of the new nations of South Asia? How did they contend with the two stages of partition—the division of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947 then the civil war within Pakistan in 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh? My conversation with Ananya Kabir draws from a discussion of her book, Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971 and Modern South Asia.
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In part 2 of my conversation with De Montfort University historian Pippa Virdee we’ll look closer at whether the violence of partition could have been avoided. We’ll consider how the difficulty of labeling the violence complicates efforts to remember what happened. We’ll learn how much of this violence targeted women who were doubly victimized both during and after partition. We’ll discuss whether the rise of populist nationalist leaders like Narendra Modi represents a failure to learn from partition. Lastly we’ll think about whether the recent creation of massive digital archives devoted to the memory of survivors gives us a better understanding of partition.
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The partition of British India in 1947 displaced over 14 million people and claimed the lives of another 1 million. Some of the worst violence occurred in the Punjab. Pippa Virdee, historian at De Montfort University in the UK and author of From the Ashes of 1947: Reimagining Punjab, explains how it took decades to include the experiences of those who suffered most from the story of partition—women, Dalits (untouchables), refugees. She points out how the once pluralistic region of the Punjab has become an increasing communalized and divided space. Lastly, she notes how despite tensions and unrest in the years and months leading up to partition, British authorities and their Indian and Pakistani counterparts, failed to anticipate the chaos and bloodshed that would follow the end of British India.
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The partition of British India is a story of extreme communal violence, mass rape, honor killings, abduction, and forced migration. It is a story where the same individuals, depending on which side of the border they found themselves, could be both victims or perpetrators. Dr. Pippa Virdee, author of From the Ashes of 1947: Reimagining the Punjab, discusses the challenge of memorializing partition on the August 1st episode of Realms of Memory.
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Nottingham Trent University historian Jenny Wüstenberg, author of Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany, argues that Germany experienced a dramatic transformation of its memorial culture during the 1980s. It was in the course of this decade that Germany pivoted from commemorating the German victims of World War II to the victims of Nazi crimes and terror during the years from 1933 to 1945. By focusing on the role of Germans as perpetrators and the suffering experienced by the victims of the Nazi regime, this negative memory culture deepens democracy by connecting the past to the present and reinforcing the importance of tolerance, respect for difference and equal rights.
- Visa fler