War Memory and Popular Culture: Essays on Modes of Remembrance and Commemoration

by Michael Keren (Editor), Holger H. Herwig (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays investigates such diverse vehicles for war commemoration as poems, battlefield tours, souvenirs, books, films, architectural structures, comics, websites, and video games. Drawing on essayists from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Israel and the United States, this work explores the evolution from traditional to contemporary forms of war commemoration while addressing the fundamental question of whether these new forms of memorial are meant to encourage the remembering or the forgetting of the experience of war, as well as what implications the process of commemoration may have for the continuation of the modern nation state.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786441419
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	01/26/2009
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Keren is a professor of communications and Canada Research Chair in communication, culture and civil society at the University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). He is the author or editor of numerous books on such topics as the media, politics and freedom of the press. A native of Hamburg, Germany, Holger H. Herwig is a professor of history and Canada Research Chair in military and strategic studies at the University of Calgary). He has written extensively about German military-diplomatic relations in the 20th century, and has taken part in several History Channel and Discovery Channel productions.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction
Michael Keren     

PART I: THE POPULARIZATION OF WAR MEMORY: REMEMBERING OR FORGETTING?
Commemorating Jewish Martyrdom
Michael Keren     
The Ninetieth Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme
Dan Todman     
Popular Memory in Northern Ireland
Rebecca Lynn Graff-McRae     
Manufacturing Memory at Gallipoli
Bruce C. Scates     
Commemoration and Consumption in Normandy, 1945–1994
Sam Edwards     
Nuclear War and Popular Culture
Arthur G. Neal     

PART II: THE MEDIA OF WAR MEMORY: EROSION OF HEGEMONY?
The Cult of Heroic Death in Nazi Architecture
Holger H. Herwig     
The Superhero Comic Book as War Memorial
Bart Beaty     
The BBC’s “People’s War” Website
Lucy Noakes     
Inscribing Narratives of Occupation in Israeli Popular Memory
Tamar Katriel     
The Operation Victory Video Game
Janis L. Goldie     
The Rwandan Genocide in Film
Kirsten McAllister     

About the Contributors     
Index     

Editorial Reviews

useful contributions...worthwhile”—Canadian Journal of History.

From the Publisher

useful contributions...worthwhile

Canadian Journal of History