Realms of Memory

From global warming to mass species extinction we are now living in what Alan Weisman describes as the make or break century. What decisions we make now will determine how we come out on the other side.  For the past quarter century Alan has traveled the globe reporting on the crises that imperil the planet.  In The World Without Us (2007), which became a New York Times bestseller, he chronicles what would become of our environment...

For the past quarter century journalist and non-fiction writer Alan Weisman has traveled the globe to write about the existential crises that now imperil the planet.  In The World Without Us (2007), which became a New York Times bestseller, he kills off humanity in the opening pages to help us imagine what would become of our environmental impact after we’re gone.  In Count Down: Our Last Best Hope for a Future on Earth (2013), he ...

Most cases of intimate partner violence are never made and the stories never told.  Joy Neumeyer did both.  The victim of an abusive relationship while a graduate student at Berkeley, Joy succeeded in having her former boyfriend and fellow graduate student expelled through the Title IX process.  Equality important, she gained recognition for the truth of the physical and emotional harm she suffered.  Through the lens of her trainin...

Weaving together her own survivor story with her doctoral research on the Russian past, Joy Neumeyer offers a personal and historical account of intimate partner violence.  How do we fall victim to abusive relationships?  What makes it so difficult to break free?  Why are these stories so often silenced?  Find out how Joy sought recourse through the Title IX process at the University of California, Berkeley and the rights and prote...

As the host of the hit true crime podcast, Surviving the Survivor, Joel Waldman spends his days airing commentary on the nation’s most heartbreaking and horrific crime stories.  Yet Joel grew up knowing very little about how his own mother Karmela, or Karm as he affectionately calls her, survived the Holocaust while her father and grandfather were gassed at Auschwitz.  Joel’s book, based on interviews with his mother, Surviving the...

When do we choose to suppress the past not just as a coping mechanism but to protect our loved ones?  Can refusing to dwell on the past and fixing our sites on the future be understood as a conscious and deliberate choice to reject the label of the victim and to adopt an optimistic outlook on life?  A conversation with Joel Waldman about his book, Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation about Life (& Death) with ...

Objects recovered from sites of mass atrocities have a special significance today.  This is because we live in what University College Dublin Professor Lea David labels as a human rights memorialization culture.  Central to this culture is the conviction that we should face difficult histories, we should remember human rights abuses, and victims should be the focus of our memorization efforts.  Objects from sites of mass atrocities...

A broken wristwatch, battered glasses or a tattered wallet, how can ordinary objects discovered at sites of mass atrocities become powerfully moving?  University College Dublin Professor Lea David calls them desire objects because they take on new and ever changing meanings from their discovery to their use in courtrooms and museums.  The most emotionally charged of all of these objects are shoes.  Now almost mandatory memory piece...

There are limits to our ability to cope with traumatic events.  When we are unable to mourn, process, and come to terms with the past we run the risk of suffering from sociocultural trauma.  This is what Tony Robben argues afflicts the people of Argentina.  Utrecht University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Tony Robben explains how repeated forms of betrayal of trust are the root cause of sociocultural trauma in Argentina.  As ...

The 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 T...

Beginning 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 it...

When 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 a...

The 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 tha...

Typically 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 t...

The 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 beli...

The 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 ...

From 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 ...

Continental 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 podcas...