Shows
Realms of MemoryArgentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning & AccountabilityThe number of disappeared from the years of dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) is still unknown. What is clear is the lingering trauma. Anthropologist Tony Robben has spent his career studying the repercussions of this era. Robben argues that the inability to mourn the dead and the military’s continued refusal to take responsibility for the past has splintered Argentina into competing memory communities. A conversation with Tony Robben about his book, Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning and Accountability, next on the August 5th episode of Realm of Memory.
2025-07-1503 minRealms of MemoryThe Perils of MemoryBeginning with calls for never again, we’re living in an age where the duty to remember has become sacrosanct. Memory has become a means of righting past wrongs, fostering trust and strengthening social cohesion. But is it also possible to see memory as a destabilizing force, undercutting the prospects for peace and stability? This is precisely what David Rieff argues in his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies. Informed by a decades-long career as a journalist and writer covering conflict zones around the globe, Rieff contends that forgetting is often the best way to reduce...2025-07-011h 30Realms of MemoryThe Perils of MemoryWhen should we remember difficult and divisive histories? After a career of covering conflicts around the globe, writer and political analyst David Reiff offers his thoughts on the question. In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies, Rieff posits that in some cases there is a consensus around the need to remember past crimes. More often, however, there is no agreement. The only way out of messy conflicts is to agree to forgive and forget. Find out more about possibilities and perils of memory on the July 1st episode of Realms of Memory.
2025-06-1703 minRealms of MemoryRemembering the Lost Counties of UlsterThe people on the borders have been forgotten and left out of the story of the partition of Ireland. Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, the three lost counties of Ulster, are both a source of shame and embarrassment for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. They are an unrecognized minority within the largely homogenized Catholic nation of Ireland. They are also the abandoned kin of the people of the six counties of Ulster that comprise Northern Ireland. Listen to University College Dublin Professor Edward Burke, author of Ulster’s Lost Counties: Paramilitarism and Loyalism since 1920, and find out why we can...2025-06-031h 00Realms of MemoryRemembering the Lost Counties of UlsterTypically left out of the story of the partition of Ireland are the three lost counties of Ulster. These are the counties of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan that were excluded from what became Northern Ireland despite their historic ties and shared stand against the creation of an independent Irish state. If Dublin and Belfast failed to form closer ties, it is impossible to understand why without considering the lost counties. If the Republic of Ireland struggled to come to terms with its own diversity, the history of the lost countries was a significant impediment. Remembering the lost countries of Ulst...2025-05-2002 minRealms of MemoryThe Great Patriotic War and Family Memory in Putin's RussiaThe memory of the Soviet triumph in World War II, or what is known as the Great Patriotic War, has become the centerpiece of Russian nationalism today. Penn State Professor Katya Haskins argues that the propensity to remember the victory over Nazi Germany and to forget Stalin’s terror contributes to the Russian willingness to support the war in Ukraine. Steeped in the memory of the Great Patriotic War, Russians are inclined to believe Putin’s claims about foreign threats and the need for a “special military operation” in Ukraine. How the memory of the Great Patriotic War hinges appeals...2025-05-061h 18Realms of MemoryThe Great Patriotic War and Family Memory in Putin’s RussiaThe memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War, has become the centerpiece of Russian nationalism. State driven politics of memory, however, cannot fully explain this development. Duty bound to remember the unimaginable sacrifices of the World War II generation, Russian families are a receptive audience to patriotic messaging. Products of a Soviet Culture with a long history of commemorating the war, Russian families are already imprinted with an understanding of the past that can be reinforced in the present. Raised in the Soviet Union and a graduate of Mosc...2025-04-1501 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Europe’s DictatorsFrom Spain to the Baltic States Europe is littered with sites connected to the personal lives of former dictators. Birthplaces, childhood homes, summer and winter residences, mausoleums and tombs these sites of dictators can be powerful poles of attraction for extremists, nostalgists, and dark tourists. They can also offer opportunities to bolster democratic systems by educating citizens about difficult pasts. How have Europeans taken up the challenge of managing these memory sites? What do these sites reveal about the politics of memory in Europe? These are the questions Spanish historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas takes up in his book Si...2025-04-0156 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Europe’s DictatorsContinental Europe is littered with the memory sites of past dictators. From birthplaces to summer residences, these remains from Europe’s darkest chapters present serious challenges to the democratic present. How do Europeans confront this past? Find out from historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, author of Sites of the Dictators: Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020, on the April 1st episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.
2025-03-1602 minRealms of MemoryMemory, Storytelling and the National Rifle AssociationThe National Rifle Association, known simply as the NRA, is often cast as a giant bogeyman for proponents of gun reform. Fears about the NRA are largely based on a misreading and misunderstanding of the organization as a political lobby whose influence peddling in Washington is the chief impediment to sensible gun reform. Entirely off the radar is the true source of power and influence of the NRA, its ability to shape a dynamic American gun culture through the power of memory and storytelling. By using its substantial communications, education, and outreach resources the NRA tells memory laden, historically i...2025-03-0459 minRealms of MemoryMemory, Storytelling and the National Rifle AssociationThe National Rifle Association is often understood as a powerful political lobby able to influence politicians and shape legislation. University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Noah Schwartz argues that the true power of the NRA is how it uses storytelling and memory. Through its extensive cultural, educational, and communications resources, the stories and memories circulated by the NRA have much to do with how Americans understand guns and gun culture today. A conversation with Noah Schwartz about his book On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling, and the NRA, next on the March 4th episode of Realms of Memory.
2025-02-1802 minRealms of MemoryAmerican Memory in the Post-9/11 EraThe 9/11 2001 attacks on America unleashed a surge of memorial work unmatched since the Civil War. New York City became a magnet for billions of dollars of spending on the construction of a memorial, museum, and high profile projects such as One World Trade Centre and the Oculus. What do these projects reveal about the nature, constraints, and abuses of 9/11 memory? To what extent have they helped or hindered American efforts to understand and to come to terms with the past? For more, listen to my conversation with New York University Professor Marita Sturken about her book Terrorism in American Mem...2025-02-0457 minRealms of MemoryAmerican Memory in the Post-9/11 EraThe attacks of September 11th 2001 challenged core beliefs about how Americans understand themselves, their relationship to others and their place in the world. How Americans responded to the attacks through their memorial work and the rebuilding of ground zero in New York City is the focus of Marita Sturken’s book Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums and Architecture in the Post 9/11 Era. A conversation with New York University Professor Marita Sturken, next on the February 4th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.
2025-01-2100 minRealms of MemoryTransformative Memory and the Mississippi Burning MurdersIn 1989 and 2004 something unusual happened in the town of Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi. After decades of silence whites finally joined their black neighbors in commemorating the 1964 murders of three young civil rights workers. What was different about 2004, however, was that the commemoration was just the beginning. The organizers forged an identity, as the Philadelphia Coalition, and went on to achieve several transformative goals. They helped bring justice to the Klan leader responsible for the murders, they helped make civil rights education mandatory across the state, and they helped establish a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to look at...2025-01-0752 minRealms of MemoryTransformative Memory and the Mississippi Burning MurdersIn 1964 three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered in Neshoba County Mississippi for their participation in the Freedom Summer voter registration campaign. How did the white community silence this past while local African Americans kept it alive? Why did both white and black Neboba Countians ultimately come together to organize two commemorations of these murders with very different outcomes? Find out from Furman University Professor Claire Whitlinger on the January 7th episode of Realms of Memory.
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Realms of MemoryDeath Strip to Green Belt: Memory and Conservation in GermanyFor decades the Cold War border between East and West Germany was one of the most militarized places on the planet. Hundreds of East Germans died and thousands more were imprisoned in their attempts to cross it. How did this former death strip become Germany’s largest conservation zone, known as the Green Belt? How did memory become a core feature of the Green Belt and how can mnemonic, or memory strategies, found in the Green Belt help make conservation work more meaningful and lasting? This is the focus of Bates College Environmental Studies Professor Sonja Pieck’s book Mnemonic...2024-12-031h 01Realms of MemoryDeath Strip to Green Belt: Memory and Conservation in GermanyHow did the death strip that once separated East and West Germany become the country’s largest protected ecological corridor? Drawing from her recent book, Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation Along the Former Iron Curtain, Bates College Environmental Studies Professor Sonja Pieck explains the origins and evolution of what is known as Germany’s Green Belt. In particular she details how conservation and memory work are interwoven in the transformation and revitalization of the former Cold War border that divided Germany. The full episode airs on December 3rd.
2024-11-1901 minRealms of MemorySplintered Memories of the Great Depression and the New DealThe Great Depression was perhaps the closest the capitalist system in the United States has ever come to complete collapse. Equally unprecedented was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal response which dramatically transformed the relationship between government, capitalism, and the American people. How was it possible that there was no national memorial to Franklin Roosevelt in Washington D.C. until 1997, over fifty years after FDR’s death? The conundrum of the absence of a shared American memory of FDR and the New Deal response to the Great Depression is the focus of University of Mississippi historian Darren E. Grem’s book proj...2024-11-0551 minRealms of MemorySplintered Memories of the Great Depression and the New DealThe Great Depression was one of the most seismic events in modern American history. Equally important was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal response to the crisis which dramatically transformed the role played by the government in the United States and the lives of its citizens. Why then is there no shared, collective memory of the New Deal and the Great Depression? Why did it take decades before Franklin Roosevelt was memorialized on the national stage in Washington DC? In his book project, Hard Times USA: The Great Depression and New Deal in American Memory, University of Mississippi historian Darren E. Gre...2024-10-1502 minRealms of MemoryMemory Politics in UkraineAuthor, co-author, and co-editor of over twenty books on the history of Ukraine, Georgiy Kaisanov has devoted much of his attention to the study of memory politics. In Memory Crash: The Politics of History in and around Ukraine 1980s-2010s, he reveals how Ukrainian history is based on a revamped, century-old, ethnonationalist history that excludes and alienates a significant part of the population. Moreover, he highlights the unplanned, haphazard approach to the past driven by the actions and responses of particular interest groups seeking influence and advantage. Rather than galvanizing the will of the people and harnessing the collective spi...2024-10-0149 minRealms of MemoryMemory Politics in UkraineMemories of the past have been central to the process of nation-state building in Ukraine. Rather than starting anew after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians dusted off a hundred year old ethnic-nationalist history and applied it wholesale to the present. In Memory Crash: The Politics of History in and around Ukraine 1980s-2010, historian Georgiy Kasianov argues that the consequences of the uses of the past have been disastrous. Rather than forging strong ties to the nation across a culturally diverse population, minority populations have been ignored and even alienated. For more on the politics of memory in Ukra...2024-09-1701 minRealms of MemoryMAGA and the National Memory DivideMake America Great Again, Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign slogan has become synonymous with his entire political movement. MAGA, the acronym, is now a catch phrase used for Trump’s most ardent supporters. Emblazoned on millions of red hats, which Trump himself helped promote, the Make America Great Again slogan lived on, even after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential elections. With its clear reference to better times in the past, what does Make America Great Again actually refer to? How do Trump’s supporters and opponents understand the slogan? What does it reveal about how Americans understand their national pas...2024-09-0356 minRealms of MemoryMAGA and the National Memory DivideAcross the political divide Americans view each other with ever deepening sentiments of distrust and suspicion. Historian Matthew Rowley argues that the absence of shared memories of a national past fuels this polarization and the rise of violence in American politics. In Trump and the Protestant Reaction to Make America Great Again, Rowley looks at what the published work of American Protestants from across the political spectrum reveals about the challenges and possibilities of forging a common narrative that could bridge the current divide.
2024-08-2002 minRealms of MemoryThe Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: The Memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights MovementHow can the past be turned against its memory keepers? How can the successes and accomplishments of a person or movement be undone by intentionally misremembering and distorting the past? University of Southern California sociologist Hajar Yazdiha argues that this is precisely what’s been happening with the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Since the Reagan era the memory of this past has been used by diverse actors on the right to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement. The memory of Dr. King has been exploited to further the goals of a w...2024-08-0646 minRealms of MemoryThe Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: The Memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights MovementFrom Latinos and women to the disabled and the LGBTQ community, a wide range of disadvantaged groups have achieved significant legal gains in the United States since the 1960s. This minority rights revolution inevitably sparked a backlash among white conservatives who felt threatened by change. In this fierce struggle over the values and character of the nation, University of Southern California sociologist Hajar Yazdiha argues that all sides have sought advantage by laying claim to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. To learn more listen to Hajar Yazdiha discuss her recent book, The Str...2024-07-1602 minRealms of MemoryConfederate Monuments and the Fight for Racial JusticeIn the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd the toppling of scores of monuments to the Confederacy made national and international news. But four years on the vast majority of these monuments remain firmly in place. University of North Carolina at Charlotte historian and professor emerita Karen L. Cox spent much of her career studying the women responsible for building most of these monuments. She decided to write No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice to help communities make informed decisions about what to do with this past. Her work sheds much needed ligh...2024-07-021h 01Realms of MemoryConfederate Monuments and the Fight for Racial JusticeFor communities to determine the fate of the hundreds of remaining monuments to the Confederacy they need to understand the context and purpose for which they were built. University of North Carolina at Charlotte historian and professor emerita Karen L. Cox stresses that these monuments were erected to restore and perpetuate a system of white supremacy. Situated in prominent public spaces, particularly outside courthouses, monuments to the Confederacy worked in tandem with Jim Crow laws and racial terror to create a system of white domination that lasted another hundred years after emancipation. A conversation with Karen L. Cox about her...2024-06-1803 minRealms of MemoryMexican Americans and the Memory of the US-Mexico WarAs campaign season in the United States kicks into high gear the border has once again become a political football for both the right and left. University of Texas at San Antonio historian Omar Valerio-Jiménez reminds us that these uses and abuses of the border typically rely on collective amnesia about the past. In Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory and Citizenship, Valerio-Jiménez shines a much needed light on how the US-Mexico War created the southern border and what this has meant for Mexicans, from Texas to California, who became American citizens. In particular, he shows how the memo...2024-06-041h 08Realms of MemoryMexican Americans and the Memory of the US-Mexico WarFears of the border are reaching fever pitch in the lead up to the 2024 US presidential elections. Much of the alarm hinges on the forgetting of the US-Mexico War (1846-1848). University of Texas at San Antonio historian Omar Valerio-Jiménez reminds us that it was the United States that invaded and annexed half of Mexico. In Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory and Citizenship, Valerio-Jiménez reveals how the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war, and its unfulfilled promise of full citizenship rights, has never been forgotten by Mexican Americans. Since the mid-nineteenth century, memories of the US-Mexico War a...2024-05-1402 minRealms of MemoryMemorials and Public Feeling in AmericaAmericans are living in an age of frenzied memorial making, argues University of Texas at Dallas art and cultural historian Erika Doss. We saturate the public landscape with memorials to every conceivable cause, aggrieved group, or unsung hero. What do memorials tell us about Americans and America today? In Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, Erika Doss contends that memorials embody public emotions such as grief, fear, gratitude, shame and anger. They help process tragic events like school shootings or terrorist attacks. They allow us to express our gratitude for past sacrifices or shame for episodes that run counter to o...2024-05-0759 minRealms of MemoryMemorials and Public Feeling in AmericaFrom the 9/11 to the Salem witch trials memorial, University of Texas at Dallas art historian Erika Doss argues that we are living in an age of memorial mania. In her book Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, Erika Doss explains how memorials embody and allow for the public expression of emotions such as grief, fear, gratitude, shame and anger. What are the benefits and drawbacks of today’s memorial culture and what does it reveal about America and Americans? Find out on the May 7th episode of Realms of Memory.
2024-04-1603 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Emmett TillIt took nearly fifty years before a single dollar was spent on commemorating Emmett Till in the state of Mississippi where he was brutally murdered in August 1955. Dave Tell, University of Kansas Professor and author of Remembering Emmett Till, argues that we can’t understand the remembering and forgetting of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta where he died without considering the natural and built environment. From the Tallahatchie River where the fourteen-year-old boy’s body was sunk to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market where the story was set in motion, the buildings and natural features of the Mississi...2024-04-0252 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Emmett TillIn August 1955 Emmett Till was abducted from his uncle’s home, tortured, shot, bound by barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and sunk in the Tallahatchie River. The outrage triggered by the photo of the mangled remains of the fourteen-year-old boy’s body in the open cassette at the funeral in Till’s native Chicago rallied many to the cause of the nascent civil rights movement. University of Kansas Professor Dave Tell, author of Remembering Emmett Till, helps us understand the forces that broke the decades long silence in the Mississippi Delta where the murder took place. The built and...2024-03-1901 minRealms of MemoryLynching, Black Culture and MemoryBeginning in 1880s Africans Americans became the targets of a lynching craze that claimed thousands of lives. In Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lyching on Black Culture and Memory, University of Oklahoma historian Karlos K. Hill argues that narratives are key to understanding not just what drove the lynching craze but how African Americans responded. It was the narrative of the black beast rapist that fueled and justified the lyching mania. African American activists and cultural actors responded with their own victimization and consoling narrative to galvanize public support and to offer examples of courage and heroism to ins...2024-03-0554 minRealms of MemoryLynching, Black Culture and MemoryDehumanizing narratives of black male bodies drove the lynching epidemic that claimed thousands of African American lives between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Dr. Karlos K. Hill, author of Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory, explains how African American political and cultural actors fought back against this reign of terror with their own humanizing and heroic narratives of lynched black bodies. Remembering lynched black bodies in ways that encouraged empathy or instilled sentiments pride was a means of finding empowering usable pasts during one of the darkest chapters in American history.
2024-02-2004 minRealms of MemoryTransitional Justice and Memory in CambodiaCambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era. How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)? In what ways were the therapeutic claims of the ECCC overblown and destined to disappoint? How did the Cambodian government use the ECCC to support its own self-serving reading of the past? What important memory work did NGOs take on that is often forgotten because of the tendency to focus exclusively on prom...2024-02-061h 02Realms of MemoryTransitional Justice and Memory in CambodiaCambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era. How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)? In what ways were the therapeutic claims of the ECCC overblown and destined to disappoint? How did the Cambodian government use the ECCC to support its own self-serving reading of the past? What important memory work did NGOs take on that is often forgotten because of the tendency to focus exclusively on prom...2024-01-1602 minRealms of MemoryRemembering the System: Enforced Prostitution by the Japanese Military in IndonesiaThe system of enforced prostitution by the Japanese military went unpunished and unexamined for decades after the Asia-Pacific War. International recognition only began in 1991 when Korean survivor Kim Hak-sun spoke out in graphic detail about her dark past. In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia, University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor tells the story of the transnational struggle for recognition and redress for and by the women of East and Southeast Asia. Focusing on the less studied case of Indonesia, she points out how the sexual abuse and exploitation of Indonesian woman began during the Dutch col...2024-01-0257 minRealms of MemoryRemembering the System: Enforced Prostitution by the Japanese Military in IndonesiaDuring the Asia-Pacific War the Japanese military forced thousands of women across East and Southeast Asia into a brutal system of organized prostitution. The label of “comfort women” only masks the true reality of this massive human rights crime that went largely unpunished for decades after the war. Most attention to this history has focused on Korea and Japan where the movement for redress began earliest. Find out how the struggle for recognition and redress unfolded in Indonesia on the January 2nd episode of the Realms of Memory podcast. Listen to University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor, author of Systemic...2023-12-1902 minRealms of MemoryCulture, Urban Development and the Memory of the Gwangju Uprising in South KoreaThe May 1980 clash between government forces and the people of Gwangju marks a key turning point toward democracy in South Korea. The nation’s sixth largest city, the citizens of Gwangju suffered immeasurably for the uprising. The city lost development support and its citizens were cast as traitors and North Korean sympathizers. The decision to select Gwangju to host a major international art exhibition, or what became known as the Gwangju Biennale, was an effort to address the injustices of the past. Author of The Cultural Politics of Urban Development in South Korea: Art, Memory and Urban Boosterism in Gwang...2023-12-0556 minRealms of MemoryRemembering the Sewol Ferry Disaster in South KoreaThe April 2014 Sewol ferry disaster is an all too familiar South Korean tragedy. Corruption, deceit, greed, and failed regulations and oversight cost nearly three hundred lives—most of whom were high school students on a trip to Jeju Island, a popular resort destination. Seoul National University Professor HaeRan Shin explains how the Sewol ferry disaster has become a site of remembering and forgetting. She reveals how economic interests worked against efforts to memorialize the tragedy. Lastly, she notes how opponents tried to discredit the memorialization project by associating it with memory activists from Gwangju and the May 18th Gwangju massac...2023-11-2114 minRealms of MemoryBolsonaro and the Memory of Dictatorship in BrazilThe military regime, which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, murdered hundreds and tortured thousands more perceived enemies of the state. How is it possible that this period of political repression, censorship, and state sponsored terror is now remembered nostalgically by many Brazilians? How did Jair Bolsonaro harness this nostalgia to win the 2018 presidential elections? Once in power, how did Bolsonaro frame the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of the memory of dictatorship with catastrophic consequences for Brazil? Leda Balbino, researcher, journalist, and deputy editor at the foreign desk of O Globo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, examines these and other...2023-11-071h 17Realms of MemoryBolsonaro and the Memory of Dictatorship in BrazilIn 1964 the military seized power in Brazil and ruled the country for the next 21 years. During this period the military used censorship, torture, and murder to silence its critics and maintain its grip on power. How did Jair Bolsonaro use the memory of this past to catapult himself to the presidency? How did Bolsonaro’s manipulation of the memory of dictatorship have catastrophic consequences for Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic? For answers to these questions and more, listen to the November 7th episode of the Realms of Memory featuring deputy editor Leda Balbino, from Brazil’s O Globo newspaper. We’ll be d...2023-10-2402 minRealms of MemoryMemory Activism in Serbia: Remembering the Wars of the 1990s in YugoslaviaIn the face of rising nationalism and denialism about crimes committed during the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia, memory activists in Serbia have been struggling to confront the past. For the last two decades Dr. Orli Fridman, from the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) in Belgrade, has made memory activism in Serbia and the wider region of the former Yugusolavia the focus of her research. Find out how several generations of memory activists have taken to the streets and on-line digital platforms to fight against denial, to preserve and communicate memories of the wars of the 1990s, an...2023-10-031h 08Realms of MemoryMemory Activism in Serbia: Remembering the Wars of the 1990s in YugoslaviaHow do memory politics in Serbia shape the memories of the wars in Yugoslavia? What role do memory activists play in this process and what practices and claims do they put forward? Dr. Orli Fridman, a professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) in Belgrade, has spent the past two decades looking at these questions. Author of Memory Activism and Digital Memory Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories, Orli Fridman will be the featured guest of the October 3rd episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.
2023-09-1904 minRealms of MemoryEntangled Memories of Partition in Modern South AsiaMuch of the focus on the memory of the partition of British India has been on the region of the Punjab. King’s College London Professor Ananya Kabir is interested in the repercussions of partition for the region of Bengal where she has ancestral ties. How did cultural actors, from archeologists and artists to singers and novelists, use their craft to shape and assess the memories of the new nations of South Asia? How did they contend with the two stages of partition—the division of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947 then the civil war within Pakistan in 1971...2023-09-0559 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Partition in the Punjab Part 2In part 2 of my conversation with De Montfort University historian Pippa Virdee we’ll look closer at whether the violence of partition could have been avoided. We’ll consider how the difficulty of labeling the violence complicates efforts to remember what happened. We’ll learn how much of this violence targeted women who were doubly victimized both during and after partition. We’ll discuss whether the rise of populist nationalist leaders like Narendra Modi represents a failure to learn from partition. Lastly we’ll think about whether the recent creation of massive digital archives devoted to the memory of survivors give...2023-08-1551 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Partition in the Punjab Part 1The partition of British India in 1947 displaced over 14 million people and claimed the lives of another 1 million. Some of the worst violence occurred in the Punjab. Pippa Virdee, historian at De Montfort University in the UK and author of From the Ashes of 1947: Reimagining Punjab, explains how it took decades to include the experiences of those who suffered most from the story of partition—women, Dalits (untouchables), refugees. She points out how the once pluralistic region of the Punjab has become an increasing communalized and divided space. Lastly, she notes how despite tensions and unrest in the years and months...2023-08-0151 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Partition in the PunjabThe partition of British India is a story of extreme communal violence, mass rape, honor killings, abduction, and forced migration. It is a story where the same individuals, depending on which side of the border they found themselves, could be both victims or perpetrators. Dr. Pippa Virdee, author of From the Ashes of 1947: Reimagining the Punjab, discusses the challenge of memorializing partition on the August 1st episode of Realms of Memory.
2023-07-1802 minRealms of MemoryMemory Activism in GermanyNottingham Trent University historian Jenny Wüstenberg, author of Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany, argues that Germany experienced a dramatic transformation of its memorial culture during the 1980s. It was in the course of this decade that Germany pivoted from commemorating the German victims of World War II to the victims of Nazi crimes and terror during the years from 1933 to 1945. By focusing on the role of Germans as perpetrators and the suffering experienced by the victims of the Nazi regime, this negative memory culture deepens democracy by connecting the past to the present and reinforcing the imp...2023-07-0456 minRealms of MemoryMemory Activism in GermanyGerman memory culture underwent a dramatic transformation in decades after World War II. In the immediate aftermath of the war the memories of veterans, Germans expelled from their ancestral homes in Central and Eastern Europe, and the victims of allied bombings dominated the remembrance of the Nazi era. By the 1980s the focus had almost completely shifted to the perpetrators of the Holocaust and the diverse groups victimized by the Nazi regime. To understand this change tune in to the July 4th episode of Realms of Memory. Listen to a conversation with Nottingham Trent University Professor Jenny Wüstenberg and a...2023-06-2002 minRealms of MemoryTurkish and Kurdish Memories of the Armenian GenocideThe beginnings of many nations are marred by traumatic memories. This is certainly true for Turkey. The modern Republic of Turkey began with the dispossession and even eradication of many of the ethnic and religious minorities who had lived for centuries within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian genocide is one of the most prominent examples. In Violence and Genocide in Kurdish Memory: Exploring the Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide through Life Stories, author Eren Yetkin argues that from the time of the genocide, which took place between 1915 and 1918, the government of Turkey has chosen to deny rathe...2023-06-0657 minRealms of MemoryTurkish and Kurdish Memories of the Armenian GenocideThe Armenian genocide would not have been possible without the active participation of local populations. Kurds, who often coexisted in the same towns and cities with Armenians, undoubtedly played a part in the genocide. Eren Yetkin, a sociologist at Koblenz University in Germany, explores the memories of the Armenian genocide in Turkey. Author of Violence and Genocide in Kurdish Memory: Exploring the Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide through Life Stories, Yetkin is particularly interested in how Turkey’s Kurdish community remembers this past. For more, listen to the June 6th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.
2023-05-2301 minRealms of MemoryWar Memorialization in the PhilippinesAfter fleecing billions of dollars from the Philippines, torturing and murdering thousands during the period of martial law, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was removed from power through a popular uprising in 1986. How was it possible that his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., was elected as president in 2022? Dr. John Lee Candelaria, from Hiroshima University, argues that a long history of memorializing heros and forgetting the victims of the nation’s past, has much to do with the reality of the Philippines present. From the influence exerted by American authorities during their half century of rule in the Philippines to the dependence on Ja...2023-05-0951 minRealms of MemoryWar Memorialization in the PhilippinesHow can we understand the nostalgia for the Marcos past that inspired many Filipinos to vote for Ferdinand Marcos Jr.? How was a possible to forget the billions of dollars stolen from the state or the thousands of Filipinos who were tortured or murdered during the period of martial law? Dr. John Lee Candelaria, from Hiroshima University, argues that memories of past wars in the Philippines offer important insights into the psyche of todays voters. For more, listen to the May 9th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.
2023-05-0201 minRealms of MemoryMemory Activism in Israel-PalestineJust as Israeli-Palestinian relations reached a new low in the early 2000s, memory activists in Israel embraced a strategy of confronting the past to resolve the crisis in the present. Dr. Yifat Gutman, author of Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future in Israel-Palestine, discusses how memory activists tackled the taboo subject of 1948. Through tours of ruined and abandoned Palestinian villages and testimonies of their former residents, memory activists tried to promote awareness of the Nakba, or the destruction in Arabic as Palestinians refer to 1948. The hope was that awareness would lead to public recognition and ultimately responsibility fo...2023-04-111h 13Realms of MemoryVictims of Commemoration in TurkeyA few months after his Justice and Development Party or AKP won Turkey’s general elections in 2011, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on his fellow citizens to confront the past. In the years that followed several prominent sites of state sponsored violence targeting ethnic and religious minorities and former political opponents of the regime were slated to become memorials and museums. What inspired this desire to confront the past? What were these sites of memory? How did the violent histories of these sites complicate these initiatives? These are the questions Professor Eray Çaylı examines in his recent book Vict...2023-03-141h 10Realms of MemoryMemory and Violence in SyriaThrough her research on Syria, SOAS, University of London Professor Salwa Ismail argues that violence needs to be understood as a deliberate method of rule. Author of The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria, Ismail cautions us not to reduce regimes that perpetrate heinous human rights violations to despotic, backward, cultures of aggression. Extreme forms of violence, such as torture or massacres, or ordinary forms of policing and surveillance, need to be understood as methods of rule aimed at dehumanizing, debilitating, and crushing the will to resist and dissent. The rule of violence has an enduring eff...2023-02-0759 minRealms of MemoryRemembering the Asaba Massacre in NigeriaIn October 1967 Nigerian federal troops slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians in the town of Asaba. Elizabeth Bird, anthropologist and professor emerita at the University of South Florida, argues that the Asaba Massacre wasn’t just one of the many atrocities committed during the Nigerian Civil War. It was a pivotal event that prolonged a conflict that claimed over a million lives. What were the causes of the Asaba Massacre? How did it prolong the war? How did it affect the lives of the people of Asaba and how it has been remembered? Liz Bird, co-author with Fraser Ottanelli of The As...2023-01-101h 24Realms of MemoryRemembering the Genocide in RwandaIn Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda,Tim Longman argues that the memory of the genocide has been instrumentalized by the long-ruling Rwandan Patriot Front or RPF. By casting itself as the selfless liberator of the Tusti minority, the RPF has used the genocide to mask its own crimes, abuses of power, and political ambitions. Showcasing the horrors of the genocide at commemorative sites helps the RPF to justify its own brand of authoritarian rule. Suspicious and distrustful of both the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, the RPF’s top down approach to governance has failed to move the count...2022-12-0654 minRealms of MemoryForensic Science and the Memory of the Civil War and Franco Era in SpainThe bones of the tens of thousands of victims of the Franco regime buried in mass graves throughout Spain are now telling their stories. Nicole Iturriaga, author of Exhuming Violent Histories: Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain’s Past, chronicles the rise of the international forensics human rights movement and how it is helping to shatter the silence about the crimes of the Spanish Civil War and Franco era. Building on a movement originating in Argentina, organizations like the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), are using the power of forensic science to reveal the crimes of the past...2022-11-011h 20Realms of MemoryMemories of Civil War in El SalvadorOver a decade of civil war tore apart the tiny Central American nation of El Salvador. Throughout the 1980s the United States poured billions of dollars into the conflict to stop the spread of communism in Central America. Beyond the massive loss of life and even greater human displacement, deathsquads and special military units massacred, tortured, and disappeared civilian populations caught in the crossfire. When a peace agreement was finally reached in 1992, all sides agreed to a general amnesty. There would be no trials, no effort to identify the perpetrators of human rights abuses or war crimes. Yet beginning in th...2022-10-0453 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Stalin’s Victims: Part 2In Part 2 of Remembering Stalin’s Victims, Georgetown University Professor Kathleen Smith explains how a conservative backlash swept Khrushchev from power and ended the first attempt to confront the Stalinist past. While destalinization persisted in the form of the dissident movement, the nearly twenty year Brezhnev era that followed was one of official silence about the crimes of the past. It was Gorbachev’s attempt to rescue the Soviet economy that unleashed a much broader wave of popular participation in remembering the past. Conservative efforts to once again reverse course ultimately failed and contributed to the acceleration of the dissolut...2022-09-0646 minRealms of MemoryRemembering Stalin’s Victims: Part 1The early decades of the Soviet Union were marred by massive human dislocation, terror, and loss of life known collectively as the repressions. With antecedents in the Lenin years but more closely associated with Stalin, Soviet leaders struggled on two occasions to confront the memory of the repressions. Kathleen Smith, author of Remembering Stalin’s Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR, compares the memory politics of the Khrushchev and Gorbachev years. In many respects, Smith argues, it was the failure to come to terms with the past that opened the door to the kind of authoritarian rule...2022-08-0947 minRealms of MemoryRehabilitating the Memory of Stalin in Putin’s RussiaThe militarism we see in Russia today has much to do with the rehabilitation of the memory of Stalin. The Stalin of the Great Terror, mass famine, and deportations has been recast as an unfortunate but necessary prelude to the victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriot War. In Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin’s Russia, Todd Nelson argues that this reimagining of Stalin is the deliberate work of Putin after his rise to power over twenty years ago. Putin used everything from schools and the media to memor...2022-07-1245 minRealms of MemoryThe Great Exodus from China: Memory and Identity in TaiwanWith the Communist victory in China in 1949 nearly one million civil war refugees flooded into Taiwan—the largest out migration from China in the modern era. Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, author of The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan, helps us understand the relationship between trauma and memory in new ways. He reveals how the memories of mainlander refugees changed over time and the therapeutic role they served. He sheds light on how mainlander refugees and their descendants used their memory work to lay claim to a new home in Taiwan. Perhaps most importantly, Dominic reveal...2022-06-0751 minRealms of MemoryRemembering the Slave Trade in LiverpoolHow has the slave trade been remembered in Liverpool—the world’s leading slave-trading port city in the eighteenth century? Jessica Moody, author of The Persistence of Memory: Remembering Slavery in Liverpool, ‘slaving capital of the world,’ explains how the slave trade has never been forgotten in Liverpool. It has lived on through public debates about the city’s identity, through the city’s anniversaries, through the city’s black population, through the celebrations of civic heroes, through museums and through the streets and neighborhoods long connected to Liverpool’s dark past.
2022-05-1055 minRealms of MemoryYasukuni Shrine and Japan’s Memory of the Asia-Pacific WarWhy has Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine become such a lightning rod for the memory wars in Japan about the Asia-Pacific War? Akiko Takenaka, author of Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar, helps us understand how the meaning of Yasukuni has changed over time and why it has become the nation’s most controversial memory site.
2022-04-1249 minRealms of MemoryLearning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of EvilHow did Germany go from being an international pariah at the end of World War II to a leader of the European Union and one of the most trusted nations on the planet? In Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, Susan Neiman argues that having the courage to confront the past did much to transform Germany’s image at home and abroad.
2022-04-1222 minRealms of MemoryRealms of MemoryRealms of Memory is a podcast that looks at how countries confront their darkest chapters, what they gain by doing so, and what happens when they fail to take up this challenge. We feature the insights of leading experts on a wide range of difficult national memories.
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