Realms of Memory

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 agree to forgive and forget.  Find out more about possibilities and perils of memory on the July 1st episode of Realms of Memory. 

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 that comprise Northern Ireland.  Listen to University College Dublin Professor Edward Burke, author of Ulster’s Lost Counties: Paramilitarism and Loyalism since 1920, and find out why we can’t understand the story of the partition of Ireland without including the lost counties.  

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 the Republic of Ireland struggled to come to terms with its own diversity, the history of the lost countries was a significant impediment.  Remembering the lost countries of Ulster with University College Dublin Professor Edward Burke, coming to the June 3rd episode of Realms of Memory.  

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 believe Putin’s claims about foreign threats and the need for a “special military operation” in Ukraine. How the memory of the Great Patriotic War hinges appeals to family memory is the focus of Katya Haskins’ book and the subject of this episode–Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia.

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 of commemorating the war, Russian families are already imprinted with an understanding of the past that can be reinforced in the present.  Raised in the Soviet Union and a graduate of Moscow State University, Pennsylvania State University Professor Katya Haskins reveals how Russian families are integral to the ways in which the Great Patriotic War is remembered in Putin’s Russia.  A conversation with Katya Haskins about her book, Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia, next on the May 6th episode of Realms of Memory.

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 taken up the challenge of managing these memory sites?  What do these sites reveal about the politics of memory in Europe?  These are the questions Spanish historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas takes up in his book Sites of the Dictators: Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020.  A conservation with Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas about sites of dictators in this episode of Realms of Memory.  

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 podcast. 

The National Rifle Association, known simply as the NRA, is often cast as a giant bogeyman for proponents of gun reform.  Fears about the NRA are largely based on a misreading and misunderstanding of the organization as a political lobby whose influence peddling in Washington is the chief impediment to sensible gun reform. Entirely off the radar is the true source of power and influence of the NRA, its ability to shape a dynamic American gun culture through the power of memory and storytelling. By using its substantial communications, education, and outreach resources the NRA tells memory laden, historically inspired stories that have had a profound impact on how American gun owners understand firearms and their desire to defend them.  A conversation with Noah Schwartz about his book On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling and the NRA on this episode of Realms of Memory.  

The National Rifle Association is often understood as a powerful political lobby able to influence politicians and shape legislation.  University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Noah Schwartz argues that the true power of the NRA is how it uses storytelling and memory.  Through its extensive cultural, educational, and communications resources, the stories and memories circulated by the NRA have much to do with how Americans understand guns and gun culture today.  A conversation with Noah Schwartz about his book On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling, and the NRA, next on the March 4th episode of Realms of Memory.

The 9/11 2001 attacks on America unleashed a surge of memorial work unmatched since the Civil War.  New York City became a magnet for billions of dollars of spending on the construction of a memorial, museum, and high profile projects such as One World Trade Centre and the Oculus.  What do these projects reveal about the nature, constraints, and abuses of 9/11 memory? To what extent have they helped or hindered American efforts to understand and to come to terms with the past?  For more, listen to my conversation with New York University Professor Marita Sturken about her book Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums and Architecture in the Post 9/11 Era.