On Buses: Still Photographs, Travelling Memories and Transnational Histories of Civil Rights Activism in Australia and North America

In memory studies in recent years, increased attention has begun to be given to the circuits that memories—broadly defined—take as they move across time and space (Erll; Levy and Sznaider; Kennedy, ‘Soul Music Dreaming’ and ‘Moving Testimony’; De Cesari and Rigney). Whereas previously the trend was toward studying memory in quite bounded and even atomised ways—for example, through specific sites of memory or particular modes of remembering—nowadays a wide assortment of memory texts are studied in motion. They are tracked as they travel and circulate through networks and across geographical, temporal and other borders. New keywords such as ‘transcultural’ and ‘travelling’ memory (Erll), ‘cosmopolitan’ memory (Levy and Sznaider), and ‘multidirectional’ memory (Rothberg) register this interest in memories on the move, and in the work they do in interconnected worlds. Importantly, these theoretical developments allow for greater consideration of the interpretive possibilities that open out when memories meet. Interpretive intensity arises at the point or moment at which overlaps, entanglements and folds occur