New Book: Theories of Memory: A Reader

January 4, 2008 · Posted in Book Reviews, Memory, Teaching Resources 

I came across this book, Theories of Memory: A Reader (edited by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead and available from The Johns Hopkins UP). The good news is that we now have an anthology of memory that’s more theoretical than James McConkey’s The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. (The bad news, of course, is that someone beat me to the punch.)

Since JHUP doesn’t seem to have a table of contents listed, I’ll provide an overview of the book’s contents. It is divided into three sections and each section containing between three and six readings (most as excerpts). The parts and sections are:

Part 1: Beginnings

  • Classical and Early Modern Ideas of Memory
  • Enlightenment and Romantic Memory
  • Memory and Late Modernity

Part 2: Positionings

  • Collective Memory
  • Jewish Memory Discourse
  • Trauma

Part 3: Identities

  • Gender
  • Race/Nation
  • Diaspora

In addition to a general introduction by Rossington and Whitehead, each of the nine sections has its own short introduction written by Rossignton, Whitehead, or Linda Anderson, Kate Chedgzoy, Pablo Mukherjee, and Jennifer Richards. Each intro has a bibliography for further reading.

While I haven’t yet had the time to read through the book carefully, I do think it looks good and it’s the kind of book I’d want to use in a class like “The Practices of Memory” or “Memory, Technology, and Culture,” although I’d want to add supplemental readings. I think it would also work well, with some scaffolding in a first-year composition class with a memory theme.

That said, I would like to have seen more readings on social memory. (While Jan Assmann is mentioned in the intro to the section, something from him would be well worthwhile, either his “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” or one of the essays from his Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, if not something from Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen–well, if I’m remembering correctly “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” is from that book, but bringing more of that book into general circulation in the English speaking world would be a very good thing.)

Along those same lines, I wish the social memory section included something from sociologist Jeffrey Orlick, touched upon social memory and anthropology, on social memory and narrative/oral tradition, and the current work on what Barbara Misztal calls the dynamics of social memory.

I’d also like to have seen sections on the technologies of memory, on media and memory, and on memory and material culture (all of which have some overlap with the various things I think the book is missing).

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