Wednesday 16 November, 1-2 pm, HYBRID (Buchanan 216, online on Microsoft Teams) Our next interdisciplinary reading group will focus on translation and activism. We warmly welcome participation from staff, postgraduate students, and Honours students interested in these topics from any disciplinary background. We will be reading the introduction to Maria Tymoczko’s influential edited volume Translation, … Read more
Wednesday 23 March, 5-6.30pm: On Svetlana Boym’s article Nostalgia and its Discontents (from The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2007), a piece that summarises the key points of her book The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001)—with a special focus on her distinction between “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgias. The article is available via this link. … Read more
Thursday 2 December 2021, 12:30 to 2pm (Online via Teams): On Astrid Erll’s Memory Worlds in Times of Corona. Online via Teams. We are delighted to announce that the reading group on this date will be run jointly with the Centre for Memory Studies of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Key reading: Astrid Erll, “Afterword: Memory Worlds in … Read more
Thursday 30 September 2021, 16:00-17:30. Location: United College. Lower College Hall (click to see map). Reading group theme: Glissant on Identity, Relation and Opacity Ten years after his death, the ideas of the Martinique-born poet, novelist and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) are gradually acquiring a notable place in anglophone discussions on cultural identity and memory. … Read more
• Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton University Press, 2017) [ebook in library] • Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change, Columbia University Press, 1999 [ebook in library] The following are available via the university library ejournals: Ater, Renée, ‘Slavery and Its … Read more
Next event: Thursday 11 March 2021, 17:00-18:30 (Microsoft Teams) Online link Title: ‘Brexit, National Identity & the Uses of History’ As the transition period ended and the United Kingdom broke its ties to the European Union, 2021 will be a crucial year in determining the UK’s place in the world. Brexit, of course, also affects … Read more
Wednesday, 25 November 2020, 12:00-13:30 (Microsoft Teams) Title: ‘Monuments & the Politics of Memory’ From the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol to those of Confederate generals in the United States, Christopher Columbus in Latin America and King Leopold II in Belgium, countless headlines in 2020 announce that monuments are the battleground where today’s ‘history … Read more
Wednesday, 19 February 2020, 4pm – 5:30pm (UCO Room 36) The first meeting of the Cultural Memory Reading Group in Semester 2, 19-20, will be about the work of Prof. Stef Craps on the Anthropocene and Memory Studies. Recommended Readings: Craps, et al. ‘Memory Studies and the Anthroposcene: A Roundtable’, Memory Studies, 11.4 (2018) 498-515. Craps, … Read more
Thursday, 14 November, 4pm – 5:30pm (UCO: Room 36) Our second meeting considers Alison Landsberg’s work on Race, Memory and Film. Prof. Landsberg is a University of St Andrews Global Fellow in Semster 2. Readings: • Landsberg, ‘Chapter 3. Remembering Slavery: Childhood, Desire, and the Interpellative Power of the Past’, in Prosthetic Memory. The Transformation … Read more
Wednesday, 16 October, 4pm – 5:30pm (UCO: Room 36) Our first meeting this semester focuses on the work of Ann Rigney on the Transnational Turn in Memory Studies. Prof. Ann Rigney, who will deliver a CIMS public lecture on 31 October. Her new ERC-funded research project, (REACT), seeks to connect practices of memory to hope … Read more
