Cirrus@Austlit

This topic introduces the concept of cultural memory and explores its effects upon the production of literary and filmic texts. How is memory represented and how is it employed within these late twentieth and early twenty-first century cultural texts? What memories are enabled and disabled in these texts, and what are the limits of memory? The ways in which memory becomes a narrative device for exploring human relationships (particularly family relationships and romantic bonds) are examined. For example, what narratives techniques are used to construct and explore the ways in which people remember their past? Why and how do memories become contested and controversial subjects within culture? What role does nostalgic and traumatic memory play in the construction of memory and its representation? And how are photographs or other visual representations implicated in the construction of memory and truth?