John Sundholm

Conny Mithander

Maria Holmgren Troy

Collective Traumas is about the traumatic European history of the 20th century - war, genocide, dictatorship, ethnic cleansing - and how individuals, communities and nations have dealt with their dark past through remembrance, historiography and legal settlements. Memories, and especially collective memories, serve as foundations for national identities and are politically charged. Regardless whether memory is used to support or to challenge established ideologies, it is inevitably subject to political tensions. Consequently, memory, history and amnesia tend to be used and abused for different political and ideological purposes. From the perspectives of historical, literary and visual studies the essays focus on how the experiences of war and profound conflict have been represented and remembered in different national cultures and communities. This volume is a vital contribution to memory studies and trauma theory. Collective Traumas is a result of the multidisciplinary research project on Memory Culture that was initiated in 2002 at Karlstad University, Sweden. A previous publication with Peter Lang is Memory Work: The Theory and Practice of Memory (2005).

Memories of War and Conflict in 20th-century Europe

Collective Traumas

Adrian Velicu

This volume is the first comprehensive mapping of how practices of cultural memory in post-communist countries and other late newcomers to the European Union have been affected due to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism. The essays cover Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, the unified Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden as well as Europe’s significant Other, Russia. The practices analysed range from films, novels and theatre to museums and state organizations such as memory institutes and pedagogical campaigns.

Conny Mithander

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