Book Spotlight

Mediating Historical Responsibility: Memories of ‘Difficult Pasts’ in European Cultures

Edited by: Guido Bartolini and Joseph Ford

book: Mediating Historical Responsibility

Mediating Historical Responsibility brings together leading scholars and new voices in the interdisciplinary fields of memory studies, history, and cultural studies to explore the ways culture, and cultural representations, have been at the forefront of bringing the memory of past injustices to audiences’ attention for many years. Engaging with the darkest pages of twentieth-century European history, dealing with the legacy of colonialism, war crimes, genocides, dictatorships, and racism, the authors of this collection of critical essays address Europe’s ‘difficult pasts’ through the study of cultural products, examining historical narratives, literary texts, films, documentaries, theatre, poetry, graphic novels, visual artworks, material heritage, and the cultural and political reception of official government reports. Adopting an intermedial approach to the study of European history, the book probes the relationship between memory and responsibility, investigating what it means to take responsibility for the past and showing how cultural products are fundamentally entangled in this process.

The book is part of the Media and Cultural Memory DeGruyter Series.

For more information about the book, please visit: Mediating Historical Responsibility (degruyter.com)


Editors:

Guido Bartolini, Ghent University, Belgium, and Chair of the new MSA Memory & Literature working group.

Joseph Ford, Senior Lecturer in French Studies/CCM Director at ILCS London, UK