Traveling War: Memory Practices in Motion

History & Memory: Traveling War, Memory Practices in Motion

The fall/winter 2015 issue of History & Memory takes as its focus "Traveling War: Memory Practices in Motion." Published by Indiana University Press, this special issue is coedited by Geoffrey M. White and Eveline Buchheim. White is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Buchheim is a researcher at NIOD, Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. 

While the spatial and architectural fixities of war memory have long attracted scholarly attention in research on memorials, monuments, battlegrounds and their commemorative practices, memory studies increasingly turn their attention to the social and performative practices that make past experiences “real” or relevant in the present. Scholars who focus on the constructions of history emerging in and around memorial sites now reject models that assume singular or fixed significance for those sites, choosing rather to see them as sites of dialogue or performative enactments of history. It is in this context that the authors collected here trace the paths of people moving through spaces of remembrance, crossing border zones where relevant identities gain heightened significance.

In doing so these studies bring an ethnographic sensibility to examine what happens as memory emerges in the activities of people “on the move” in the transcultural and transnational circuits of travel and remembrance. The five contributions in this volume focus on diverse types of transnational memory-making: East German experts who contributed to war efforts and urban reconstruction in Vietnam returning to places of their involvement (Christina Schwenkel); Holocaust families participating in several varieties of institutionalized remembrance (Carol A. Kidron); Americans touring World War II battlegrounds in France (Geoffrey M. White); offspring of wartime liaisons between Japanese men and Dutch women visiting Japan (Eveline Buchheim); and Okinawans returning to their former places of residence in Micronesia (Shingo Iitaka). Approaching these subjects with ethnographic methods and archival research, these studies pursue multi-sited research to reveal the complex and layered nature of memory formation among and between multiple agencies.

Contents of the special issue include:

• Geoffrey M. White and Eveline Buchheim, "Traveling War: Memory Practices in Motion"
• Christina Schwenkel, “The Other Veterans: Socialist Humanitarians Return to Vietnam”
• Carol A. Kidron, “Survivor Family Memory Work at Sites of Holocaust Remembrance: Institutional Enlistment or Family Agency?”
• Geoffrey M. White, “Is Paris Burning? Touring America’s ‘Good War’ in France”
• Eveline Buchheim, “Enabling Remembrance: Japanese-Indisch Descendants Visit Japan”
• Shingo Iitaka, “Remembering Nan’yō from Okinawa: Deconstructing the Former Empire of Japan through Memorial Practices”

Published semiannually by Indiana University Press, History & Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past (ISSN 0935-560X) explores the manifold ways in which the past shapes the present and is shaped by present perceptions. Each issue  focuses on a wide range of questions relating to the formation of historical consciousness and collective memory, the role of historical memory in modern and premodern cultures, and the relationship between historical research and images of the past in different societies and cultures. History & Memory aims to explore not only official representations of the past in public monuments and commemorations but also the role of oral history and personal narratives, the influence of the new media in shaping historical consciousness, and the renewed relevance of history writing for emerging nations and social conflicts.

History & Memory is edited at the Eva and Marc Besen Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness, Faculty of the Humanities, Tel Aviv University. For more information, and to subscribe, visit History & Memory online.