Realms of Memory

Remembering Emmett Till

In August 1955 Emmett Till was abducted from his uncle’s home, tortured, shot, bound by barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and sunk in the Tallahatchie River.  The outrage triggered by the photo of the mangled remains of the fourteen-year-old boy’s body in the open cassette at the funeral in Till’s native Chicago rallied many to the cause of the nascent civil rights movement.  University of Kansas Professor Dave Tell, author of Remembering Emmett Till, helps us understand the forces that broke the decades long silence in the Mississippi Delta where the murder took place.  The built and natural environment of the Delta, Tell argues, has had a profound influence on the memory and legacy of the murder.  For my full conversation with Dave Tell, tune into the April 2nd episode of Realms of Memory. 

Lynching, Black Culture and Memory

Beginning in 1880s Africans Americans became the targets of a lynching craze that claimed thousands of lives.  In Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lyching on Black Culture and Memory, University of Oklahoma historian Karlos K. Hill argues that narratives are key to understanding not just what drove the lynching craze but how African Americans responded.  It was the narrative of the black beast rapist that fueled and justified the lyching mania.  African American activists and cultural actors responded with their own victimization and consoling narrative to galvanize public support and to offer examples of courage and heroism to inspire future generations.  Victimization and consoling narratives were both examples of how African Americans found usable pasts to fight against racial violence and injustice.  

Lynching, Black Culture and Memory

Dehumanizing narratives of black male bodies drove the lynching epidemic that claimed thousands of African American lives between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.  Dr. Karlos K. Hill, author of Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory, explains how African American political and cultural actors fought back against this reign of terror with their own humanizing and heroic narratives of lynched black bodies.  Remembering lynched black bodies in ways that encouraged empathy or instilled sentiments pride was a means of finding empowering usable pasts during one of the darkest chapters in American history.  

Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia

Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era.  How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)?  In what ways were the therapeutic claims of the ECCC overblown and destined to disappoint?  How did the Cambodian government use the ECCC to support its own self-serving reading of the past?  What important memory work did NGOs take on that is often forgotten because of the tendency to focus exclusively on prominent institutions such as the ECCC?  To answer these questions and more listen to University of Bath sociologist Pete Manning, author of Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia: Beyond the Extraordinary Chambers.

Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia

Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era.  How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)?  In what ways were the therapeutic claims of the ECCC overblown and destined to disappoint?  How did the Cambodian government use the ECCC to support its own self-serving reading of the past?  What important memory work did NGOs take on that is often forgotten because of the tendency to focus exclusively on prominent institutions such as the ECCC?  To answer these questions and more listen to the February 6th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast featuring Dr. Pete Manning, author of Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia: Beyond the Extraordinary Chambers.

Remembering the System: Enforced Prostitution by the Japanese Military in Indonesia

The system of enforced prostitution by the Japanese military went unpunished and unexamined for decades after the Asia-Pacific War.  International recognition only began in 1991 when Korean survivor Kim Hak-sun spoke out in graphic detail about her dark past.  In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia, University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor tells the story of the transnational struggle for recognition and redress for and by the women of East and Southeast Asia.  Focusing on the less studied case of Indonesia, she points out how the sexual abuse and exploitation of Indonesian woman began during the Dutch colonial era.  She reveals how collaboration with the Japanese, sentiments of shame, and Cold War political and economic pressures favored the silencing of this past.  

Remembering the System: Enforced Prostitution by the Japanese Military in Indonesia

During the Asia-Pacific War the Japanese military forced thousands of women across East and Southeast Asia into a brutal system of organized prostitution.  The label of “comfort women” only masks the true reality of this massive human rights crime that went largely unpunished for decades after the war.  Most attention to this history has focused on Korea and Japan where the movement for redress began earliest.  Find out how the struggle for recognition and redress unfolded in Indonesia on the January 2nd episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.  Listen to University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor, author of Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia.  

Culture, Urban Development and the Memory of the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea

The May 1980 clash between government forces and the people of Gwangju marks a key turning point toward democracy in South Korea.  The nation’s sixth largest city, the citizens of Gwangju suffered immeasurably for the uprising. The city lost development support and its citizens were cast as traitors and North Korean sympathizers.  The decision to select Gwangju to host a major international art exhibition, or what became known as the Gwangju Biennale, was an effort to address the injustices of the past.  Author of The Cultural Politics of Urban Development in South Korea: Art, Memory and Urban Boosterism in Gwangju, HaeRan Shin discusses the challenge of reconciling urban development with the memory of the Gwangju Uprising.  

Remembering the Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea

The April 2014 Sewol ferry disaster is an all too familiar South Korean tragedy.  Corruption, deceit, greed, and failed regulations and oversight cost nearly three hundred lives—most of whom were high school students on a trip to Jeju Island, a popular resort destination.  Seoul National University Professor HaeRan Shin explains how the Sewol ferry disaster has become a site of remembering and forgetting.  She reveals how economic interests worked against efforts to memorialize the tragedy.  Lastly, she notes how opponents tried to discredit the memorialization project by associating it with memory activists from Gwangju and the May 18th Gwangju massacre.  

Bolsonaro and the Memory of Dictatorship in Brazil

The military regime, which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, murdered hundreds and tortured thousands more perceived enemies of the state.  How is it possible that this period of political repression, censorship, and state sponsored terror is now remembered nostalgically by many Brazilians?  How did Jair Bolsonaro harness this nostalgia to win the 2018 presidential elections?  Once in power, how did Bolsonaro frame the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of the memory of dictatorship with catastrophic consequences for Brazil?  Leda Balbino, researcher, journalist, and deputy editor at the foreign desk of O Globo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, examines these and other questions in her recent book, Digital Memory in Brazil: A Fragmented and Elastic Negationist Remembrance of the Dictatorship.