Sites Of Memory Research Articles

What (Counter) Monuments for Feminism? The Debates over Monumental Commemoration and the Search for New Feminist Memory Frameworks

At the intersection of memory and feminist studies, this article examines the issue of suffrage and feminist monumental commemoration in the United States. Starting from the deficit of statues representing female historical figures in the public space, it analyzes the conception and reception of two important monuments honoring women’s suffrage (Portrait Monument 1921 and the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument 2020). While those monuments have somewhat broken the “bronze ceiling”, they testify to the mechanics of exclusion and inclusion at work both in the construction of history and memory. Then, the article takes on a broader perspective, questioning the extent to which traditional monuments, as products of a patriarchal culture and memory, can properly commemorate modern feminism. The essay identifies two trends, one consisting of transforming the bronze through various strategies, the other of “breaking the bronze” by replacing it with other materials and proposing new memory frameworks belonging to what James E. Young has labeled countermonuments. Still, the article ultimately questions the limits of the monument itself and points to the notion of interactive spaces as perhaps the most adequate sites of memory for the complex, multifaceted, contested, and contemporary movement that feminism(s) stand(s) for.

Heritagizing the Maestro

Bhupen Hazarika was a multifaceted personality known for his contributions as a singer, songwriter, composer, filmmaker, writer, and social activist from Assam, a state in the north-eastern part of India. To honour his life and works, a memorial site is constructed in the Jalukbari area of Assam. The site is called ‘Dr Bhupen Hazarika Samadhikshetra’. It is located in Guwahati city, near Gauhati University, in the state of Assam, India. The literal meaning of the Assamese words Samadhikshetra is a burial site. Through empirical research, the paper investigates the conceptual framework of heritagization as applied to Dr Hazarika’s legacy, focusing on preserving, maintaining, and celebrating his contributions to society. The study emphasises the role of the memorial site, as a tangible example of Dr Hazarika’s cultural relevance by delving further into its architectural design, symbolic elements, and commemorative features. Beyond these tangible aspects, the study also addresses the intangible values, identity and collective memories that the site evokes and preserves. The paper also explores the close interaction between the cultural and constructed heritage of the site, emphasising the need for a holistic strategy to protect and preserve the cultural past. Despite controversies and challenges over selecting the last resting place of Dr Hazarika, the Samadhikshetra stands as a tribute to his lasting influence and gratitude for his artistic legacy. Through commemorative events and ongoing public engagement, the memorial site continues to serve as a sacred space where Dr Hazarika’s spirit can live on and inspire future generations.

What to do with our Memory Sites: A Reflection on the Contribution of Archaeology and Architecture in the Tourist Development of the Bimbia SITE

The article deals with historical memory and the importance of memorial sites, focusing on Bimbia, a site associated with the slave trade in Central Africa. It examines the historical context of Bimbia, highlighting its role as a transit point for slaves, while also addressing present challenges, such as armed conflict in the region. Theoretical debates on the conservation and restoration of monuments, illustrated by interventionist and anti- interventionist positions, are presented to stand up for a balanced approach to the enhancement of Bimbia. The article proposes a synthesis of preservation methods, with a view to guaranteeing the historical integrity of the site while developing its tourism potential. Finally, the article argues for tourism development that respects and integrates local cultural and social realities, thereby promoting sustainable and inclusive development.

When the past meets the present: The role of memory sites in time of crisis in Chile

In October 2019, massive social unrest broke out in Chile, triggering unprecedented violence and destruction unseen since the Pinochet dictatorship. The State responded with harsh repression, curfews, a state of emergency, and torture reminiscent of past violence. The Social Outbreak reopened old wounds in Chilean society that had never fully healed. Since the return of democracy in the 1990s, numerous sites of memory have been erected, created, or rescued from civil society organisations with the scope of preserving the memory of those brutally killed, tortured, or made disappear during the Pinochet dictatorship. During the 2019 social protests, several sites of memory played an active role, either by providing first aid to protesters or by documenting the crimes committed by the military and police in the streets. Other sites of memory actively engaged with the Constitutional Convention process that followed the social protests. The paper examines and compares the roles played by two renowned memory sites, Londres 38 and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, during and after the Social Outbreak. It delves into the potential of memory sites as a tool for present-day activism. It analyses how Chile’s 2019 social uprising was a critical instance where memory sites played a significant role in supporting and promoting social change. The utilisation of memory sites as a tool for activism has successfully broken down the temporal barrier between the past and the present and raised awareness regarding the relevance of memory in comprehending contemporary social issues in Chile.

Making Memories: Countercultural Memory in Irenaeus, Martyrdom of Polycarp, and Apocryphon of James

Abstract Cultures define themselves largely by how they remember the past; the commemoration of history provides a link to bygone eras that helps determine social dynamics in the present. But not everyone remembers the past in the same manner. Not only do people champion competing historical narratives, but they also memorialize the past in different ways, such as erecting monuments, glorifying a specific person, constructing and honoring an archive, revering a symbol, holding an event that repeats periodically, maintaining an institution, and more. These various hubs of memory creation and preservation are often called “sites of memory.” This article explores how various Christian groups in the second century invested their social memory in divergent sites. These sites not only propagated differing forms of Christian expression, but also diverse notions of what it means to remember. While some championed preservation of the past, others believed that memory entailed radical innovation.

3D characterization of the Mila 18 archaeological site in Warsaw, Poland: From imaging to excavation

Archaeological site investigations in urban environments are often beset with challenges such as (1) an absence of buried artifacts due to recent disturbance from infrastructure development or (2) community concerns about potential site impacts from excavations. Noninvasive geophysical surveys that use a combination of methods can help mitigate the risks of uncertain outcomes by identifying areas where culturally significant features are more likely to be uncovered. We show how new technology and traditional geophysical survey methods were used to characterize the subsurface of the Mila 18 Memorial site in Warsaw, Poland. This site is one of the most important places of remembrance for the Holocaust and coincides with the location of an underground bunker that was used by Jewish resistance groups during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In this case study, we showcase the use of drone multispectral imaging and handheld lidar scanning in conjunction with other geophysical techniques including electrical resistivity tomography, ground-penetrating radar, magnetic gradiometer, twin-probe resistance, and fixed-frequency electromagnetic surveying. The geophysical results were included in an interactive 3D site model to help identify a suitable site for excavation. To document the excavation and to validate and further interrogate the geophysical survey results, we used lidar-based photo-textured scans of the excavation that were incorporated into the 3D site model.

Lived queer memorials: How socially inclusive are queer sites of memory?

This article delves into queer memorials: public artworks dedicated to, and commonly designed to commemorate, LGBTQ + people’s lives. As part of a broader international multisite project, we present the first comprehensive case-study survey ( N = 343) of its kind, examining how everyday members of the public experience the Amsterdam Homomonument as an inclusive site of memory. As the world’s first publicly commissioned monument inaugurated for the gay community in 1987, our study shows how Amsterdam Homomonument currently occupies a realm intersecting gay and ‘post-gay’ public memories and imaginings. Through analysing Amsterdam Homomonument as a lived queer memorial, our study reveals the ambiguous experiences of inclusion and exclusion that publics derive from its place and community roles. We argue that queer sites of memory attain inclusiveness through establishing space that embraces broader arrays of gender and sexual differences, amid an era marked by heightened visibility of LGBTQ + communities (though not necessarily).

Teaching Art Online During COVID-19 Using Media as Sites of Memory

Teaching Art Online During COVID-19 Using Media as Sites of Memory

The unique preservation of Yves Saint Laurent’s birthplace: A singular cultural heritage in Oran

Abstract In 2020, the Affane Mohamed Foundation initiated the restoration of the Yves Saint Laurent house in Oran, Algeria, led by architect Youcef Fernane. The project aimed not only to restore the artist’s birthplace but also to showcase his first private theatre, sketches, drawing table, study, and personal bedroom. The house, built in 1925 in the Plateau Saint-Michel district (now Hai Sidi El Bachir), exemplifies neoclassical architecture with Art Deco influences. This project stands out as a unique initiative in Oran, where the preservation of public figures’ homes is rare, making it an exception in Algeria. The restoration, completed in 2022, has attracted significant attention, drawing visitors locally and internationally, particularly through social media, highlighting the cultural and historical value of the site. The research addresses visitor feedback, hypothesising variability in their testimonials, which serve as constructive criticism of this initial tourism initiative in Oran. The dual objectives are to illuminate the significance of the Yves Saint Laurent residence and to analyse visitor perceptions and attitudes towards this memorial site. Methodologically, the study is based on documentary research, including recent surveys and photographs from the Youcef Fernane design office and qualitative data from online questionnaires and visitor books. The results highlight the house’s importance as a cultural landmark but also reveal a lack of publicity, affecting its visibility. Conclusions suggest that the museum significantly enhances Oran’s cultural landscape, offering emotional and educational experiences. However, there is a need for better promotional efforts to increase its visibility and appeal to a broader audience, emphasising the importance of strategic marketing and visitor experience improvements for future projects.

Sutjeska Memorial Park (1958–75): Yugoslav World War II Memorial Complexes and Embodied Strategies for Solidarity

ABSTRACT This article investigates the expansion of World War II memorial sites in socialist Yugoslavia, with a focus on the Sutjeska Memorial Park in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Beginning in the early 1960s, a new typology of memorial complexes emerged, merging domestic tourism and commemoration. These sites operated as forms of social infrastructure that provided ground not solely for the remembrance of the historical events of the War but for enabling solidaristic sentiments required to prevent its resurgence. The Sutjeska Memorial Park exemplifies how artists and architects experimented with new forms to produce embodied affective strategies to engage new generations without personal war memories. Expanded memorial parks attempted to evoke somatic responses to fascist horror while using new tourist amenities to stimulate a sense of significance across diverse generational and cultural communities. Drawing on archival materials and the formal elements of Sutjeska’s monuments, this research examines understudied sites that produced immersive environments intended to open the realm of visual experience to other embodied possibilities and to instil new cultural practices of comradeship and commemoration. This paper illustrates how the design of the Sutjeska Memorial Park as social infrastructure facilitates its continued function today despite Yugoslavia’s dissolution, maintaining much of its original antifascist character.

The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial of Alexandria, Virginia: A remembered, “forgotten,” and re‐remembered memory site

The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial of Alexandria, Virginia: A remembered, “forgotten,” and re‐remembered memory site

“They will not erase the blood, of those who fell here”: a multimodal analysis of the music video as a site of (post)memory and resistance against negationism in post-dictatorial Chile

ABSTRACT This paper explores how a contemporary music video can pass down memories and trauma in post-dictatorial Chile. Focusing on a video by the Chilean band Illapu, it uses theories of collective trauma and (post)memory to show how the video represents past traumas and challenges dominant narratives and current negationist discourses. The study finds that the video uses audio-visual and (inter)textual elements to make viewers reflect on the past, underlining its ability to counter attempts to deny or distort history. This contributes to understanding how music videos can serve as sites of “voiced postmemories” and act as powerful tools in the collective processing of traumatic events, promoting truth, justice, and reconciliation in post-dictatorial Chile.

Searching for John Knox: Heritage Entanglements in Gamilaroi Country

ABSTRACT This essay discusses a road trip through Gamilaroi Country in regional New South Wales, “in search of” Pte. John Knox, an Aboriginal serviceman who is buried at Singapore’s Kranji War Cemetery. It shares insights into Australia’s multilayered heritage “entanglements” learned while travelling with his grandson, Les Knox, to their hometown, the Toomelah Aboriginal Community on the border of Queensland and New South Wales. Written collaboratively as an account of places encountered episodically during this shared journey, the essay describes the many suppressed layers of First Peoples’ memory and memorialisation that are drawn to the surface by storytelling. They are obscured by the more visible and prominent settler heritage of war memorials and ex-military migrant camps. The first part of this article traces John Knox’s training in Australia and service in Malaya through maps conjectured using various sources. The second part of the essay focuses on three key physical sites: The Toomelah War Memorial, the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial Site and the 1965 Freedom Ride, where this heritage manifests. It raises deeper questions on the “politics of sharing:” how we define and commemorate “conflict,” how and when we acknowledge Aboriginal service people and whether we connect to the Asia Pacific region.

La cerimònia dels Jocs Florals i la «glorificació» dels poetes catalans morts: del Parc de la Ciutadella al «Parc del Renaixement»

In 1908, the poet and publisher Francesc Matheu proposed the permanent public “glorification” of a group of Catalan poets he considered symbols of Catalonia’s 19th-century literary renaissance, through the installation of a series of monumental busts in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park, continuing thereby the initiative to erect there a monument to Bonaventura Carles Aribau in 1884. The proposal resulted in the unveiling of six busts between 1908 and 1913 with the aim to transform a space that had been a symbol of the military repression of the city into a site of memory for the movement known as Renaixença resorting to the symbolic capital of the Jocs Florals as a pacifying and “civilising” device. This article aims to analyse the controversies triggered by Matheu’s proposal and the forcefulness with which it was questioned by the different political and cultural actors in the context of the Solidaritat Catalana movement, the political campaign that would culminate in the constitution of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya in 1914, and the construction of the “ideal Barcelona” as the capital of the imagined “Catalunya-Ciutat”.

L’ús pòstum de les figures literàries en l’esfera pública: pràctiques i processos commemoratius en la cultura catalana contemporània

This special issue brings together a series of in-depth case studies of commemorative discourses and practices dedicated to some of the most important figures in contemporary Catalan literature from the beginning of the 19th century onwards, which contributed to transform selected writers (including Antoni Capmany, Jaume Balmes, Jacint Verdaguer, Àngel Guimerà and Josep Maria de Sagarra, as well as female authors, such as Josepa Massanés, Mercè Rodoreda, Anna Murià, Maria Aurèlia Cap-many and Montserrat Roig) into collective memory sites for the Catalan community. It aims to contribute critically to the burgeoning international scholarship on “cultural saints”, that is, the (generally male) writers, artists and intellectuals marked out as representative of cultural-national community identities in the age of consolidation of the nation-state. The bodies and corpora of the symbolic figures and cultural icons examined across the nine articles commissioned and collected here both served to confer legitimacy on diverse projects and agents in the public sphere and were the site of sometimes heightened debate over contested cultural memory narratives. In other words, they show the ways in which Catalan commemorative practices and processes are both a vehicle for the construction of a distinctive community imaginary as well as reflecting the divisions and dissensus between different agents and sub-groups, according to social, political, geographical, linguistic, generational and gender affiliation, among other factors.

Communist Prison Camps as Sites of Memory and Legacies of Dissent: Belene and Goli Otok in Bulgarian and Croatian Cultural Memory

This article investigates how two Communist forced labour camps, Belene in Bulgaria and Goli Otok in Croatia, became sites of memory and remain icons of political repression and state-organized torture. The article discusses how the public memory of the two camps has been shaped through vivid depictions in former inmates’ memoirs and in works of fiction. It analyzes recent debates about the preservation and institutionalization of these sites of memory and about what, whom, and how to commemorate. As a further step, it investigates how the camp sites have attracted visitors interested in so-called dark tourism. The article explores the creation of a literary tradition of memory by tracing the writings that have helped to establish Belene and Goli Otok as sites of memory of political repression in Bulgaria and Croatia, and it examines the processes involved in the construction of the physical sites as heritage sites and tourist attractions.

Jewish Spaces in Egypt as Sites of Memory

This article explores Jewish spaces in Cairo as repositories of memory and their role in shaping a collective understanding of the Jewish past among non-Jewish Egyptians. By examining these sites through the perspectives of engaged observers, it uncovers their multifaceted reflections of Jewish life and culture. Interactions with these sites reveal the intricate interplay of internal and external factors, such as the dynamics between Jews and Muslims, the reverberations of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and societal responses to Jewish culture. These sites evoke a sense of patriotism among Egyptian Jews and their fellow citizens, marked by the fusion of Arabic, Hebrew, Judaism, and Islam. Understanding this perspective necessitates considering the roles of various stakeholders, including the remaining Jewish community, state institutions, conservationists, and scholarly professionals. It also requires an examination of ongoing societal debates and official decisions regarding the preservation or demolition of Jewish sites. Diverse viewpoints emerge from these discussions, reflecting issues like anti-Semitism, anti-Israel sentiments, distrust of the Egyptian state, and prioritizing the preservation of inhabited spaces over abandoned ones. By shedding light on these contradictions within Egyptian public discourse, this article underscores the significance of acknowledging and celebrating Egyptian Jewish heritage, which continues to shape society today.

Collective Memory at Canada's Prison for Women

This essay proposes a critical phenomenology of the ontological, social, ethical, and political dimensions of collective memory. At an ontological level, the site of collective memory is not intentional consciousness but rather the lifeworld itself, understood as a historically sedimented context for meaning and mattering. The social dimension of collective memory is structured around an antagonism between hegemonic public memory and insurgent countermemory. The ethical dimension issues a command to anyone to listen and respond to the countermemory of the oppressed. And the political dimension of collective memory asks us to commit to building a world that refuses to repeat past oppression; it calls for the reclamation and (re)invention of a collective procedural memory of how to care for a common world. This analysis of collective memory unfolds in the context of a proposed memorial garden on the grounds of Canada's first prison for women, which is in the process of being redeveloped into luxury condominiums.

The Representation of the Rural Landscape and 124 Bluestone Road as Sites of Traumatic Memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

In our article we argue that, in Beloved, Morrison’s narrative technique employs the rural environment and this enigmatic house as potent metaphors for the inescapable burden of history and the complexity of memory. As we traverse the terrain of Morrison’s literary landscape, we explore how these sites of traumatic memory serve as powerful tools for engaging with and confronting the past. We highlight the critical importance of recognizing and reckoning with the painful past, ultimately inviting readers to confront their own relationship with history and memory.

Contested urban assemblages: ruination and restoration of postcolonial sites of memory

ABSTRACT Recent work on ruination has explored the capacity of ruins to embody multiple and contradictory meanings within a single site. This paper considers the capacity of ruined sites of memory to disrupt the relationship between past and present, celebration and shame, Self and Other. Ruins produce new expressions of time and space that transcend the intentions of either architect or spectator. Restoration, however, may attempt to overwrite this ambivalence with a single, dominant narrative. As a case study, this paper turns to the garden of tropical agronomy, a palimpsestic ruin in the Parisian suburbs that gives material form to both the imperial past and the process of forgetting the empire. It traces the history of the garden, and various unsuccessful attempts to restore it, before considering the successful renovation of the Tunisian Pavilion in 2020. Drawing from Actor-Network Theory, it analyses these interventions as acts of translation that alternately attempt to impose a singular meaning on the garden and enrich to its multi-layered form. Despite the intentions of human actants, throughout its recent history the garden’s uneasy multivocality has endured. Amidst conflicting and overlapping narratives, the garden haunts post-imperial Paris and undermines its attempts to consign empire to the past.