Memorialisation

Edited by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner. Assistant Editors: Christopher Herzog and Sophie Allen.

Asking how we cope with change and compensate for loss, both cognitively and culturally, this volume brings together leading scholars in museum studies and art history, literature and trauma studies, theology, psychiatry, neuroscience and cultural anthropology. In nine papers, this book traces the changing role of cultural vehicles for memorialisation and offers thought-provoking insights into biological, economic and political reasons for collecting and museum-building as well as into the practice of forensic archaeology pushed by sites of atrocity and genocide. Exploring discourses in trauma and (self-)life writing, this volume also ventures into new fields of research, such as digital mourning, and deals with practical examples of memorialisation from (auto-)biography, music, stage-design and sculpture to city-wide exhibitions. 'Memorialisation' addresses issues of topical concern (the role of memory in post-conflict states, the cultural and religious contexts for commemorating victims of history) and aims to make cultural theory and practice meet. - Contents: Mark Jones: From Consumption to Commemoration. Collecting and Museums. - Krzysztof Pomian: Relics, Collections, and Memory. - Paul Arthur: Death in Social Media. The Digital Afterlife. - Gabriele Dolff-Bonekämper: Late Experience of Loss, Mediated Witnessing, Future Memory. - Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio/Christopher Herzog: A Virtual Interview with Hans Förstl, Stefan Lichtenthaler, and Hans J. Markowitsch: Memory and Forgetting as a Challenge for Medicine. - Franz Gmainer-Pranzl: 'Memoria'. Crisis of the Cultural Memory. Aspects of an Anamnetic Theology. - Roger Luckhurst: Digging up Memories. Forensic Archaeology, Cultural Trauma and the Contemporary Mass Grave. - Gabriele Linke: Challenging Memory. Autobiography and (Self-)Life Writing. - Sabine Coelsch-Foisner: In Conversation with Hubert Wild (Singer and Actor) and Alexander Polzin (Sculptor, Stage Designer and Painter): Memory Art. The Art of Commemoration. - X,170 Seiten und 26 Abb. auf 14 Farbtafeln, gebunden (Kulturelle Dynamiken/Cultural Dynamics/Wissenschaft und Kunst; Vol. 28/Universitätsverlag Winter 2015)