The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials

by Erika Doss

Overview

From the commemoration of September 11 to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to the 2004 unveiling of the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C., recent decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of new public memorials built in both Europe and the United States. This volume considers the contemporary explosion of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices of mourning, memory, and public feeling. Positing memorials as the physical and visual embodiment of our affective responses to loss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles, balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragic death in order to better comprehend how grief is mediated in contemporary commemorative cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789089640185
Publisher:	Amsterdam University Press
Publication date:	03/18/2008
Series:	Meertens ethnology cahier
Pages:	52
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Erika Doss is professor in and chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Table of Contents

Introduction
 
Things Matter
 
Public Grief
 
Mourning Codes
 
Death Matters
 
Memory and Public Feeling
 
Conclusion
 
Notes