Abstract
This programme engages with recent discussions regarding collective memory. Within this broad and cross-disciplinary field it focuses in an innovative way on the dynamics of cultural remembrance and on the role played by different media (texts, images, monuments etc) in the evolution and maintenance of 'memory sites'. While there has been some work done on the role of particular media in cultural remembrance, as yet we know little about how different mnemonic practices interact with each over time and about the ways in which cultural remembrance can be influenced by the introduction of a new medium. Our programme will thus contribute to a more systematic understanding of the role of the modern media in the cultural life of memory sites. It does so by concentrating on three issues. (1) what happens to a historical topic as it passes from one medium to another (say, from fictional and non-fictional stories, to photos, to monuments, to commemo-rative ceremonies, to souvenirs?); (2) what happens to existing practices when a new technology (photography, film, internet) becomes available? (3) what is the relationship between the use of media and the formation of 'memory communities'? In addressing these questions with detailed analysis of particular cases, we propose to show how the 'medium is the memory': how we remember as a society determines what we remember.