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This book provides an introduction to the concept of cultural memory, offering a comprehensive overview of its history, forms and functions.
"Is, as Hamlet once feared, the time out of joint? What has happened to our relation to the past and the future? The past has returned in various shapes: as nostalgia, as traumatic impact, and as historical origin or key event for the purposes of nation building. The future, meanwhile, has lost much of its glamor, too. The notion of progress and a utopian future have been eroded a growing ecological crisis. The seemingly solid moorings of our temporal orientation have collapsed within the time span of a generation. In order to better understand our temporal crisis, we must start by reconstructing what has just disappeared. In this book, Aleida Assmann tracks the rise and fall of what she calls "the time regime of modernity," explaining what we have both gained and lost in this profound transformation of our cultural values and premises"--
Examining the role of memory in the transition from totalitarian to democratic systems, this book makes an important contribution to memory studies. It explores memory as a medium of and impediment to change, looking at memory's biological, cultural, narrative and socio-psychological dimensions.
"The book traces the process of creating of a new German memory of the Holocaust after the fall of the Wall. Combining theoretical analysis with historical case studies, the book revisits crucial debates and controversial issues out of which Germany's new 'memory culture' emerged as a collective project and work in progress"--
Karin Tilmans is an historian, and academic coordinator of the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, Florence. Frank van Vree is an historian and professor of journalism at the University of Amsterdam. Jay M. Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale. --
Faithful Renderings reads translation history through the lens of Jewish–Christian difference and, conversely, views Jewish–Christian difference as an effect of translation. Subjecting translation to a theological-political analysis, Seidman asks how the charged Jewish–Christian relationship—and more particularly the dependence of Christianity on the texts and translations of a rival religion—has haunted the theory and practice of translation in the West. Bringing together central issues in translation studies with episodes in Jewish–Christian history, Naomi Seidman considers a range of texts, from the Bible to Elie Wiesel’s Night, delving into such controversies as the accuracy of various Bible translations, the medieval use of converts from Judaism to Christianity as translators, the censorship of anti-Christian references in Jewish texts, and the translation of Holocaust testimony. Faithful Renderings ultimately reveals that translation is not a marginal phenomenon but rather a crucial issue for understanding the relations between Jews and Christians and indeed the development of each religious community.
Divided into seven themed chapters: signs, media, body, time, space, memory and identity, this book aims to provide a fresh approach to complex theoretical and historical questions. Sparking the reader's interest in literature from different genres and periods, this volume not only provides a useful introduction, it is an important study tool which supports the reader's own endeavours to get to grips with the relationship between reading and major key questions of culture.--Back cover
A significant contribution to memory studies and part of an emergent strand of work on global memory. This book offers important insights on topics relating to memory, globalization, international politics, international relations, Holocaust studies and media and communication studies.
This volume extends the theoretical scope of the important concept of empathy by analysing not only the cultural contexts that foster the generating of empathy, but in focusing also on the limits of pro-social feelings and the mechanisms that lead to its blocking.
Funeral rites help people to cope with their loss and express their religious needs. Even in a secularised society such as that in the Netherlands large groups of people still fall back on ecclesiastic rites when a loved one dies. But how does one explain that there are more people participating in church funerals than people who assign religion a focal place in their lives? How do present-day funeral-goers regard the rites in which they participate? Does the rite actually help them to bridge the gaps left by the deceased? This study considers such questions from the angle of ritual and liturgical studies by way of empirical research into perceptions of present-day church funerals in the Netherlands.