The memory of catastrophe

by Peter Gray (Editor), Kendrick Oliver (Editor)

Overview

Investigates the dynamic relationship between experiences of profound social and cultural disruption, and human memory. Critical comparisons are made across a wide variety of catastrophic experiences and memories; not just of war, but also of massacre, genocide, rebellion, famine, partition, shipwreck and fire. The book is an accessible showcase for a wide range of methodological approaches to the study of memory, including literary studies, cultural studies, participant-observation and historical studies, and uses a variety of oral, visual and written sources. Offers a diverse chronological and geographical range of catastrophic cases, from seventeenth-century England to the recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, from Ireland to the Indian sub-continent, from Mexico to wartime Leningrad. Well-written and accessible – a fascinating read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719063459
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	05/13/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Peter Gray is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton. Kendrick Oliver is a Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Southampton

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
1. Introduction – Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver
2. Remembering the English Civil War – Mark Stoyle
3. ‘Diabolical design’: Charleston elites, the 1822 slave insurrection and the discourse of the supernatural – P. A. Cramer
4. Memory and the commemoration of the Great Irish Famine – Peter Gray
5. ‘The greatest and the worst’: Dominant and subaltern memories of the Dos Bocas well fire of 1908 – Glen D. Kuecker
6. The Titanic and the commodification of catastrophe – James Guimond
7. Doctors and trauma in World War One: The response of British military psychiatrists – Edgar Jones
8. Commemorations of the siege of Leningrad: A catastrophe in memory and myth – Lisa A. Kirschenbaum
9. The missing camps of Aktion Reinhard: The judicial displacement of a mass murder – Donald Bloxham
10. Memory and authenticity: The case of Binjamin Wilkomirski – Andrea Reiter
11. Partition memory and multiple identities in the Champaran district of Bihar, India – Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff
12. Bodies do count: American nurses mourn the catastrophe of Vietnam – Carol Acton
13. ‘Not much of a place anymore’: The reception and memory of the massacre at My Lai – Kendrick Oliver
14. Remembering Vukovar, forgetting Vukovar: Constructing national identity through the memory of catastrophe in Croatia – Rose Lindsey
15. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Sawoniuk? British memory of the Holocaust and Kosovo, Spring 1999 – Tony Kushner

Editorial Reviews

"I loved this book--a fabulous topic, powerfully argued. The entire book was riveting. It should become required reading for anyone interested in disaster, war and memory."--Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck College

From the Publisher