Results by title
173 books match the query 'Collective Memory' and 5 start with p
Parcels
Memories of Salvadoran MigrationMike Anastario
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Past Forward
French Cinema and the Post-Colonial HeritageDayna Oscherwitz
Southern Illinois University Press, 2010
In Past Forward: French Cinema and the Post-Colonial Heritage, author Dayna Oscherwitz focuses on the world of French films with a new lens. Drawing upon a wealth of research and the examination of popular French movies, Oscherwitz offers fresh perspectives not only on the unique importance of motion pictures and their indelible influence on French character, but on current debates regarding individual and collective memory.
Past Forward traces the development and ascension of the French heritage film—those historical and costume dramas focusing on prestigious French subjects, events, and settings. These motion pictures, preeminent during a period of globalization and fear over the affects of immigration in 1980s France, quickly came to embody a specific version of French national and collective identity: one that idealized the past, condemned the present, and created an institutional form of memory. Oscherwitz presents the intriguing notion that French heritage films are not exclusively expressions of nationalism and nostalgia as has commonly been asserted. On the contrary, although these movies were born out of a perceived loss of French culture, their ambivalence toward traditional hallmarks of nationalism opens them up to new interpretation. Also in contrast to typical conceptions, the author suggests that these heritage films are far from cinematic bastions of multicultural backlash; instead, she argues, popular culture has in its own fashion reinserted the history of colonialism and immigration into the national past, thus reimagining heritage itself.
Against this backdrop, Oscherwitz goes on to investigate the multicultural worlds of beur and banlieue movies—cinema seemingly in direct contrast with the heritage film—offering the theory that these films serve as a “countermemory” to an institutionalized one and provide alternative models of collective memory and identity. Through careful analysis of several examples, Oscherwitz demonstrates how these two seemingly different realms—heritage and multicultural cinema—are far from mutually exclusive in the construction of French identity.
Throughout the volume, numerous well-known French movies are reexamined, inviting new interpretations of and challenging old views through investigations of familiar cinematic works. Past Forward is arevolutionary volume that boldly reimagines our ideas about French film and its role in communicating history and memory.
Patton's Shadow
The Making of a Hero in Modern MemoryNathan C. Jones
University of Alabama Press, 2024
An engrossing account of the myth and legend of George S. Patton and what his reputation illuminates about American culture and hero worship
Patton’s Shadow by Nathan C. Jones, a leading authority on George S. Patton, offers a definitive account of the creation of the Patton legend and what it illuminates about American culture and the worship of heroes. Jones traces how the persona of Patton, a brash and brilliant general in the European theater of World War II, transcended the individual man and became a cultural icon and byword for triumphal American might.
Patton was a hero lionized and celebrated in his own time. Patton as well as the US Army cultivated his persona during and after the war. His image was used to promote patriotism, commercial goods, and military recruitment. The 1970 Academy Award–winning film starring George C. Scott cemented his iconic image for millions of Americans, further embellishing Patton’s persona and introducing him to entirely new generations of young Americans.
Patton’s Shadow is an intellectually omnivorous tour de force that draws on ideas about heroes from sources as timeless as ancient mythology and as contemporary as Abraham Maslow, Max Weber, and Carl Jung. Jones artfully locates the honored altar that heroes occupy in the human heart and then answers insightful questions about what America’s embrace of Patton in particular as a military hero illuminates about the United States, about Patton’s generation, and about our own.
Jones’s engrossing work will fascinate readers interested in American history, military history, and the psychology of heroism.
Performance in the Zócalo
Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the PresentAna Martínez
University of Michigan Press, 2020
A saying in Mexico City is “quien domina el centro, domina el país” (whoever dominates the center, dominates the country) as the Zócalo continues to act as the performative embodiment of Mexican society. This book highlights how particular performances build upon each other by recycling past architectures and performative practices for new purposes. Ana Martínez discusses the singular role of collective memory in creating meaning through space and landmarks, providing a new perspective and further insight into the problem of Mexico’s relationship with its own past. Rather than merely describe the commemorations, she traces the relationship between space and the invention of a Mexican imaginary. She also explores how indigenous communities, Mexico’s alienated subalterns, performed as exploited objects, exotic characters, and subjects with agency. The book’s dual purposes are to examine the Zócalo as Mexico’s central site of performance and to unmask, without homogenizing, the official discourse regarding Mexico’s natives. This book will be of interest for students and scholars in theater studies, Mexican Studies, Cultural Geography, Latinx and Latin American Studies.
Poland's Memory Wars
Essays on IlliberalismJo Harper
Central European University Press, 2018
This volume of essays and interviews by Polish, British, and American academics and journalists provides an overview of current Polish politics for both informed and non-specialist readers. The essays consider why and how PiS, Law and Justice, the party of Jarosław Kaczynski, returned to power, and the why and how of its policies while in power. They help to make sense of how “history” plays a key role in Polish public life and politics.
The descriptions of PiS in Western media tend to rework old stereotypes about Eastern Europe that had lain dormant for some time. The book addresses the underlying question whether PiS was simply successful in understanding its electorate, and just helped Poland to revert to its normal state. This new Normal seems quite similar to the old one: insular, conservative, xenophobic, and statist.
The book looks at the current struggle between one ‘Poland’ and another; between a Western-looking Poland and an inward-looking Poland, the former more interested in opening to the world, competing in open markets, and working within the EU, and the latter more concerned with holding onto tradition.
The question of illiberalism has gone from an ‘Eastern’ problem (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc.) to a global one (Brexit and the U.S. elections). This makes the very specific analysis of Poland’s illiberalism applicable on a broader scale.