An Evening with David Blight

Monday evening, November 18, students from Gettysburg College got to sit down and discuss memory with Dr. David Blight from Yale University, author of the renowned work Race and Reunion. The session was conducted as an informal panel with Dr. Blight and Gettysburg College’s own Dr. Isherwood and Dr. Jordan. Dr. Blight spoke about beginning his work when memory studies was not an official field and stumbling his way headlong into working with the memory of the American Civil War. When discussing whether or not memory studies were a fad that would pass away, Blight reassured the audience that people have doing memory studies long before there was an official field. Memory is essential to who we are as human beings and all peoples and all nations construct their past in a way that is useable to their future. [excerpt

Organizational Memory Studies

This paper provides an overview and discussion of the rapidly growing literature on organizational memory studies (OMS). We define OMS as an inquiry into the ways that remembering and forgetting shape, and are shaped by, organizations and organizing processes. The contribution of this article is threefold. We briefly review what we understand by organizational memory and explore some key debates and points of contestation in the field. Second, we identify four different perspectives that have been developed in OMS (functional, interpretive, critical and performative) and expand upon each perspective by showcasing articles published over the past decade. In particular, we examine four papers previously published in Organization Studies to show the distinctiveness of each perspective. Finally, we identify a number of areas for future research to facilitate the future development of OMS

Memory studies: концептуальные основы исследования

Статтю присвячено змісту основних понять історії пам’яті, таких як «пам’ять», «колективна пам’ять», «ідентичність» тощо. Автор аналізує історію виникнення головних методологічних засад цього напряму досліджень, базованих на соціологічному підході до вивчення пам’яті, а також вплив психоаналітичній традиції.The article considers main terms of memory studies, such as «memory», «collective memory», «identity» etc. The author analyses development of main methodological principles of a given area based on the sociological approach to the memory studies, and influence of psychoanalytical tradition.Статья посвящена содержанию основных понятий истории памяти, таких как «память», «коллективная память», «идентичность». Автор анализирует историю возникновения основных методологических принципов этого направления исследований, которые базируются на социологическом подходе к изучению памяти, а также влияние психоаналитической традиции

"FlashForward": an experiment in Collective Memory Studies

"The thesis investigates the case of the modern Television drama series FlashForward and sets out to chart the employment of concepts of Collective Memory Studies in the narrative in order to reflect upon the ways of how social perceptions of the past and Collective Memory are remediated in the course of the narrative. To achieve that goal, the thesis provides a selection of concepts and theories concerned with Collective Memory and its medial presentation. Then the series is set into context of a classification of ‘megamovies’ in order to identify characteristics inherent in complex narratives of series such as ‘Battlestar Galactica’, ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Lost’,’ Fringe’,’ V’ and ‘FlashForward’. As a means of illustrating the complexity of the series’narration, an appendix provides additional information such as the first episode’s mise-en-scène, a chronological sequencing of this episode and an overview of the social relations evolving during the whole season of the show. Subsequently, the characteristics are compared to the discourse of Collective Memory and relations such as the series as ‘fiction of memory’ and ‘fiction of meta-memory’, the presence of intra- and extradiegetic remediations, and the specific role of the narrator in such a fiction of memory are revealed. Finally, the thesis concludes that this television series plays with multiple concepts of Media of Collective Memory and adds a new dimension to the larger discussion about individual and collective memories. What is found in particular is a narration that adds a twist to the definition of memory, because it turns the temporal directionality of memories around.

Researching Memory in Early Modern Studies

This essay pursues the study of early modern memory across a chronologically, conceptually and thematically broad canvas in order to address key questions about the historicity of memory and the methodologies of memory studies. First, what is the value for our understanding of early modern memory practices of transporting the methodologies of contemporary memory studies backwards, using them to study the memorial culture of a time before living memory? Second, what happens to the cross-disciplinary project of memory studies when it is taken to a distant period, one that had its own highly self-conscious and much debated cultures of remembering? Drawing on evidence and debates from a range of disciplinary locations, but primarily focusing on literary and historical studies, the essay interrogates crucial differences and commonalities between memory studies and early modern studies

Surveying the Field of Collective Memory Studies

Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook is a survey of the complex and disparate field of cultural/collective memory studies. The volume, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, provides an account of research in this broad field that is at once systematic, historical, genealogical and disciplinary. Bringing together contributions from history, philosophy, literary studies, sociology, political science, media studies and psychology, the volume examines relationships between culture and memory, their individual and social aspects, mnemonic products, and processes of remembrance. The negotiation of interdisciplinary links makes this handbook a first step towards the development of a meta-concept of memory in sociocultural contexts.&nbsp

Memory ecologies

The individual and collective and also cultural domains have long constituted challenging boundaries for the study of memory. These are often clearly demarcated between approaches drawn from the human and the social sciences and also humanities, respectively. But recent work turns the enduring imagination – the world view – of these domains on its head by treating memory as serving a link between both the individual and collective past and future. Here, I employ some of the contributions from Schacter and Welker’s Special Issue of Memory Studies on ‘Memory and Connection’ to offer an ‘expanded view’ of memory that sees remembering and forgetting as the outcome of interactional trajectories of experience, both emergent and predisposed