The memory of catastrophe

Peter Gray, Kendrick Oliver

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781526185761
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• The memory of catastrophe
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver
• 2 Remembering the English Civil Wars Mark Stoyle
• 3 Diabolical design': the Charleston elite, 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 the First World War: 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
• Index