Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the humanities and social sciences in Western Europe and North America experienced a 'memory boom' that gave rise to new research agendas and provoked interdisciplinary exchange. Less known are the ways in which academic practices of Memory Studies have been applied, adapted, and transformed in the countries of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Proceeding from a clear-eyed interrogation of the 'memory boom' paradigm itself - and its theoretical portability into a new cultural context - this volume collects new and varied perspectives on the challenges of post-catastrophic memory, offering a novel approach to a paradigm that has become canonical and crystallized.

Uilleam Blacker is Research Associate in Polish studies on the international collaborative research project 'Memory at War', University of Cambridge, UK. He is the co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012).

Alexander Etkind is Professor of Russian Literature and Cultural History at the University of Cambridge, UK. A Fellow of King's College, he directs the international project 'Memory at War'. He is the author of Eros of the Impossible (1996); Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience (2011); and co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012). His book Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied is forthcoming in 2013.
 
Julie Fedor is Research Associate on the 'Memory at War' project in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is the author of Russia and the Cult of State Security (2011); co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012); and co-editor of Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States (forthcoming 2013).

Introduction; Uilleam Blacker and Alexander Etkind
PART I: DIVIDED MEMORY
1. Europe's Divided Memory; Aleida Assmann
2. Human Rights and European Remembrance; Jay Winter
3. European Memory: Between Jewish and Cosmopolitan; Natan Sznaider
PART II: POST-COLONIAL, POST-SOCIALIST
4. Between Paris and Warsaw: Multidirectional Memory, Ethics and Historical Responsibility; Michael Rothberg
5. Theory as Memory Practice: The Divided Discourse on Poland's Postcoloniality; Dirk Uffelmann
6. Occupation vs Colonization: Post-Soviet Latvia and the Provincialization of Europe; Kevin M. F. Platt
PART III: MOURNING MATTERS
7. Murder in the Cemetery: Memorial Clashes over the Victims of the Soviet-Polish Wars; Andrzej Nowak
8. Living among the Ghosts of Others: Urban Postmemory in Eastern Europe; Uilleam Blacker
9. Towards Cosmopolitan Mourning: Belarusian Literature between History and Politics; Simon Lewis
PART IV: MEMORY WARS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
10. Why Digital Memory Studies Should Not Overlook Eastern Europe's Memory Wars; Ellen Rutten
11. Memory Wars in Post-Soviet Ukraine (1991-2010); Andriy Portnov
12. The Struggle for History: The Past as a Limited Resource; Ilya Kalinin