The phenomenon of martyrdom is more than 2000 years old but, as contemporary events show, still very much alive. This book examines the canonisation, contestation and afterlives of martyrdom and connects these with cross-cultural acts and practices of remembrance. Martyrdom appeals to the imagination of many because it is a highly ambiguous spectacle with thrilling deadly consequences. Imagination is thus a vital catalyst for martyrdom, for martyrs become martyrs only because others remember and honour them as such. This memorialisation occurs through rituals and documents that incorporate and re-interpret traditions deriving from canonical texts. The canonisation of martyrdom generally occurs in one of two ways: First, through ritual commemoration by communities of inside readers, listeners, viewers and participants, who create and recycle texts, re-interpreting them until the martyrs ultimately receive a canonical status, or second, through commemoration as a means of contestation by competing communities who perceive these same people as traitors or terrorists. By adopting an interdisciplinary orientation and a cross-cultural approach, this book goes beyond both the insider admiration of martyrs and the partisan rejection of martyrdoms and concisely synthesises key interpretive questions and themes that broach the canonised, unstable and contested representations of martyrdom as well as their analytical connections, divergences and afterlives in the present.

Prof. Ihab Saloul is Founding Director and Academic Co-Director of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) at the University of Amsterdam. Saloul is Professor of Memory Studies and Narrative at the International Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities "Umberto Eco", Bologna University. He is the author of Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012),and an editor of two book series: 'Heritage and Memory Studies' (Amsterdam University Press), and 'Palgrave Studies of Cultural Heritage and Conflict' (Palgrave Macmillan). His research interests include heritage and memory studies, conflict and identity politics, narrative and literary theory, museum studies and material culture, cultural analysis, post-colonialism and visual culture as well as migration, diaspora and exile in contemporary cultural thought in the Middle East and Europe.Prof. Jan Willem van Henten is Professor of Religion (in particular Ancient Judaism and Ancient Christianity) at the University of Amsterdam. He is also extra-ordinary Professor of Old and New Testament at Stellenbosch University (South-Africa). His research projects concern Jewish and Christian Martyrdom, the Maccabean Books, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, and research into the reception of the Bible in popular culture.

Introduction Jan Willem van Henten and Ihab Saloul1. Interaction of Canon and History: Some Assumptions Tobias Nicklas 2. The Changing Worlds of the Ten Rabbinic Martyrs Yair Furstenberg3. 'Who Were the Maccabees?': The Maccabean Martyrs and Performances on Christian Difference Jennifer Knust4. Perpetual Contest Mieke Bal5. 'Martyrs of Love': Genesis, Development and Twentieth Century Political Applica-tion of a Sufi Concept Asghar Seyed-Gohrab6. Commemorating World War 1 Soldiers as Martyrs Jan Willem van Henten7. The Scarecrow Christ: The Murder of Matthew Shepard and the Making of an American Culture Wars Martyr Paul Middleton8. Icons of Revolutionary Upheaval: Arab Spring Martyrs Friederike Pannewick9. Yesterday's Heroes? Canonisation of Anti-Apartheid Heroes in South Africa Jeremy Punt 10. The Martyrdom of the Seven Sleepers in Transformation: From Syriac Christianity to the Qur'an and to the Dutch-Iranian Writer Kader Abdolah Marcel Poorthuis11. 'Female Martyrdom Operations': Gender and Identity Politics in Palestine Ihab Saloul12. Hollywood Action Hero Martyrs in 'Mad Max Fury Road' Laura CopierIndex