Memory Narratives Research Articles

Aging impacts memory for perceptual, but not narrative, event details.

Memory is well known to decline over the course of healthy aging. However, memory is not a monolith and draws from different kinds of representations. Historically, much of our understanding of age-related memory decline stems from recognition of isolated studied items. In contrast, real-life events are often remembered as narratives, and this kind of information is generally missed in typical recognition memory studies. Here, we designed a task to tax mnemonic discrimination of event details, directly contrasting perceptual and narrative memory. Older and younger adults watched an episode of a television show and later completed an old/new recognition test featuring targets, novel foils, and similar lures in narrative and perceptual domains. While we observed no age-related differences on basic recognition of repeated targets and novel foils, older adults showed a deficit in correctly rejecting perceptual, but not narrative, lures. These findings provide insight into the vulnerability of different memory domains in aging and may be useful in characterizing individuals at risk for pathological cognitive decline.

Queering and decolonising the museum: ‘In the Presence of Absence’ exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum

This review engages with the recent ‘In the Presence of Absence’ exhibition (2020–2021), which was held at the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art (Amsterdam, the Netherlands). By focusing on three artistic interventions included in the exhibition (Werker Collective’s ‘A Gestural History of the Young Worker’, Farida Sedoc’s ‘The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be’, and Jennifer Tee’s ‘Tampan Ship of Souls #2’ and ‘Tampan the Collected Bodies’), we aim to highlight ways of creatively queering and decolonizing artistic practices and spaces, including museums and conventional memory narratives.

The Revenge Narratives and Community of Memories in the Drama A Hawk

The Revenge Narratives and Community of Memories in the Drama A Hawk

Narratives of Traumatic Memory and Relocation of Victims in The Lotus and the Storm

Narratives of Traumatic Memory and Relocation of Victims in The Lotus and the Storm

The Role and Function of Autobiographical Memory Narratives during the Emotional Processing of Breast Cancer Treatment: An Empirically-Derived Memory Coding System.

Breast cancer (BC) in younger age is a critical and potentially traumatic experience that can interrupt the continuity of self-narrative during a crucial phase. In the Narrative Identity framework the translation of memories into autobiographical narratives is an internal and external process that plays a key role in meaning-making, social relationships and self-coherence. The aim of this study is to examine the role and function that autobiographical memory narratives (AMN) play in the process of adaptation to BC medical treatment. Seventeen BC women below 50 years received prompts to provide autobiographical memory narratives at four phases during their treatment (pre-hospitalization-T1-post-surgery-T2-chemo-radio therapy-T3-follow-up-T4). The Emotional Processing Scale (EPS) was also administered. In all, 68 AMN were collected. A three step procedure of data analysis was conducted. The first one, an empirically-derived memory coding manual to analyze key dimensions of AMN was developed: Agency; Emotional Regulation and Interpersonal Relations. Findings show a particular vulnerability in narrative identity faced by BC women during the shift from T1-T3. In the second one, an emotional coping profile for each woman focusing on the shift from T1-T3 was created. For the third step, these profiles were compared with the EPS scores. The final results suggest the capacity of the AMNs to differentiate the women's emotional adaptation over the course of the BC treatment. Despite the study's limitations, it supports the use of AMN as clinical device to construct a deeper knowledge and profiling trajectory of how women have internalized and elaborated past encounters with illness and help providers, as well as their prior experience of bodily/psychological health and integrity. This information adds to an understanding of their current efforts at recovery and adaptation. In this way we believe that the recollection of narrative memories, not only at the end of the cancer treatment but also during its process, could help the women to mend the broken continuity of their narrative self, as they seek to maintain a healthy balance of internal resources across their past, present, and projected future.

Dialogic Memories in Graphic Narratives: Intergenerational Entanglements of Witnessing, Trauma and Vulnerability

Dialogic Memories in Graphic Narratives: Intergenerational Entanglements of Witnessing, Trauma and Vulnerability

Bring on The Parade: queer cinema, memories of war and transnationalism in Srđan Dragojević’s Parada (2011)

ABSTRACT This article examines Srđan Dragojević’s film The Parade (Parada), a co-production between Serbia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Monte Negro, Slovenia and the Council of Europe, analysing how it engages with both queer rights and nationalist memory narratives. The Parade was released in 2011, a year after an anti-gay riot led to more than 100 people being injured at Belgrade Pride. In spite of these events, Dragojević’s comedy-drama and its depiction of an unlikely friendship between a homophobic criminal and a gay veterinarian became a box-office hit both in Serbia and in neighbouring countries. This popularity is all the more interesting due to how the film depicts not only LGBTQI activism, but also the history of the break-up of Yugoslavia and the question of transnational solidarity. In doing so, The Parade is emblematic of other queer films produced in the region, with works such as the Croatian Fine Dead Girls and The Constitution, the Bosnian Go West and the Slovenian Guardian of the Frontier also thematising homophobic prejudice in conjunction with nationalism and memories of war. Drawing on this, this article examines how The Parade and other films in the region such as Rajko Grlić’s The Constitution address queer identity, memory and (trans)nationalism.

Associations between episodic detail in young adults’ memory narratives and depressive symptoms: Event type matters

This study aimed to partially replicate and extend an unexpected finding by Salmon et al. (2021) that, for community adolescents, greater episodic detail in a self-relevant narrative (a life turning point) predicted higher depressive symptoms concurrently and across one year. We recoded 164 young adults’ life narratives of three types (i.e., high point, low point, and turning point) from a previously published dataset. We replicated the finding that greater episodic detail in the turning point, concurrently predicted greater depressive symptoms, albeit with a modest effect size. Episodic detail did not depressive symptoms in the low or high point narrative, and nor did it predict anxiety symptoms. Our earlier finding with adolescents has now been replicated with emerging adults, with implications for theories of the relationship between autobiographical memories and depression and for memory-based early intervention approaches.

Формирование памяти о Первой мировой войне через деятельность британских ветеранов и историческую политику Великобритании в 1930-е гг.

Importance. The scientific problem lies in the World War I historical memory’s formation’s features’ study. The purpose of the research is to reveal what was the ratio of the state’s and veterans’ influence in the narratives’ formation of World War I historical memory in the Great Britain in the 1930s. Research Methods. The historical policy of the British government in the field of the memory about World War I was studied by a historical and systematic approach for consideration as one of the instruments of influence on the Great Britain’s society. The activity of veteran organizations and individual front-line soldiers during the 1930s was analyzed, whose protest against the state narrative of historical memory after the “Great Depression” began to fade by 1939. Results and Discussion. On the basis of the materials of the British press of the 1930s, as well as the involvement of additional sources, narratives about World War I were illustrated, which gradually changed in the 1930s. The ideology and activities of the state in the field of historical policy actively from 1932–1933 displaced negative ideas about the war, suppressed anti-war movements and pacifist sentiments in British society. The strengthening of the state’s influence on the British Legion testified to its subordination to the official agenda, which allowed the ruling circles to use veterans in the implementation of domestic and foreign policy (to develop international contacts, influence public opinion). Conclusion. The value of the research lies in the introduction into scientific circulation of the materials of the British press as historical sources that allow us to trace the gradual weakening of the role of veterans’ organizations in the field of memory about World War I by the middle of 1930s, and the strengthening of the influence of the state in this regard. The correlation of official and public (veteran) narratives in historical memory is shown.

Narratives of the Collective Memory of Turkey: Shaping National Identity and Historical Understanding

Narratives of the Collective Memory of Turkey: Shaping National Identity and Historical Understanding

Socio-historical representations of a disease: a study of posters from campaigns against Hansen's disease during the second half of the twentieth century.

This article analyzes the use of iconographic sources in the context of educational campaigns to combat Hansen's disease from a socio-historical perspective at four points in time: the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. Four posters are analyzed to identify the elements (textual, visual or graphic) used to develop discourse on this disease and those it affected and transformations and permanences in this discourse, as well as to verify how they became part of a narrative of institutional memory linked to public health in the state of São Paulo. These were produced by various public health institutions and are part of the Health Campaign Poster Collection held by the Emílio Ribas Public Health Museum.

Representações sócio-históricas de uma doença: um estudo sobre cartazes de campanhas para o combate à hanseníase na segunda metade do século XX

Abstract This article analyzes the use of iconographic sources in the context of educational campaigns to combat Hansen’s disease from a socio-historical perspective at four points in time: the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. Four posters are analyzed to identify the elements (textual, visual or graphic) used to develop discourse on this disease and those it affected and transformations and permanences in this discourse, as well as to verify how they became part of a narrative of institutional memory linked to public health in the state of São Paulo. These were produced by various public health institutions and are part of the Health Campaign Poster Collection held by the Emílio Ribas Public Health Museum.

War in European Museum Narratives and Cultural Memory

The article examines how the war narrative is displayed in modern European museum exhibitions, particularly in light of new museology and cultural memory trends in Germany and Poland. The study recognises that the contested nature of cultural and historical contexts influences the process of representing cultural memory in museum narratives. It combines the theoretical approach of museology with specific museum practices. Using case studies from the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History, Dresden, Germany; the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Berlin, Germany; and the Museum of the Second World War, Gdansk, Poland, the author examines the impact of challenging issues centred on cultural memory of the war in museum exhibitions over recent decades. The study underlines the significance of innovative approaches to museum exhibitions that display the experience of war and contribute to social dialogue and sustainability.

Nurses’ Moral Distress in the Time of Covid-19 Needs to be Further Explored and Addressed

“Moral distress” is a term used to describe a phenomenon that is of great clinical significance and may have disastrous consequences not only for nurses (or other healthcare professionals), but also for patients. It was first defined by Jameton as “constraint distress”, namely, “the psychological distress of being in a situation in which one is constrained from acting on what one knows to be right.” Later, the definition of moral distress expanded to include not only the so-called “constraint distress”, but also the so-called “uncertainty distress” that compromises the values and moral integrity of the person who is experiencing it. At any rate, in the literature there have been offered various and overlapping accounts of moral distress. Moral distress is inherent in nursing. Not surprisingly, during the COVID-19 pandemic the risk of moral distress among ICU nurses is high. The unprecedented and unique pandemic nursing care circumstances revealed a new broader concept of nurse moral distress that is integrated, with an intrapersonal dimension and an interpersonal dimension. There have been proposed various interventions for mitigating moral distress among nurses working in COVID-19 healthcare settings. Among these interventions are included nurses’ self-reflection to be aware of their own moral distress, nurses’ autobiographic narration of memories and emotions, creating conditions promoting’ spirituality, addressing newly appeared institutional shortcomings in mental healthcare settings, and training nurses in ethical issues and dilemmas. Exploring nurses’ moral distress in the COVID-19 context and developing interventions to address it are ongoing. Starting points for future research emerged from this literature review.

Phenomenological variables of autobiographical memory narratives associated with healthy habits in children

Different studies relate self-defining memories (SDM) to psychological well-being and health. This study aims to analyze the relation between the phenomenological variables (e.g., emotional intensity, vividness etc.) involved in self-defining memories associated with health (HSDMs) and healthy habits in 262 children aged between 9 and 13 years. Participants’ eating habits and physical activity events are associated with the emotionality of their HSDMs. Most of the HSDMs were declared to be experienced with their family members, and greater importance was attributed to those memories related to mothers. Significant features of retrieved HSDM can be detected from construction of autobiographical memories supporting the development of a robust healthy self in children. As such, families and schools should facilitate life experiences that lead to the formation of vivid and detailed HSDMs given that this is likely to promote health-related behaviours. Diferentes estudios relacionan los recuerdos autodefinidos (SDM) con el bienestar psicológico y la salud. Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar la relación entre las variables fenomenológicas (p. ej., intensidad emocional, viveza, etc.) implicadas en los recuerdos autodefinidos asociados a la salud (HSDM) y los hábitos saludables en 262 niños de entre 9 y 13 años. Los hábitos alimentarios y los eventos de actividad física de los participantes están asociados con la emotividad de sus HSDM. La mayoría de los HSDM declararon ser vividos con sus familiares, y se atribuyó mayor importancia a aquellos recuerdos relacionados con las madres. Se pueden detectar características significativas del HSDM recuperado a partir de la construcción de recuerdos autobiográficos que respaldan el desarrollo de un yo saludable y robusto en los niños. Como tal, las familias y las escuelas deben facilitar experiencias de vida que conduzcan a la formación de HSDM vívidos y detallados, dado que es probable que esto promueva comportamientos relacionados con la salud.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ КАРИБСКОГО КРИЗИСА В ВИДЕОИГРАХ: НА ПРИМЕРЕ CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS

The aim of the study is to assess the specifics of the memorial positioning of the Caribbean crisis and the related events in the US video games. The work was carried out on the basis of an appeal to the case of the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops. The research methodology is based on a combination of the descriptive analysis and case studies. The author comes to the conclusion that the Call of Duty: Black Ops memorial mode contextually assumes that the actions of the United States on the eve and during the Caribbean crisis appear rational and morally justified, while the Soviet Union and the Cuban authorities acted as a source of significant risks and threats both to America and to the Cuban people themselves. At the same time, the illegal de facto actions of the US authorities are actually legitimized due to the background narrative, mainly expressed outside the textual form, through the activity approach and the formation of the context of perception. The creators of the game essentially reproduce the memorial narrative that is traditional for describing the Cuban Missile Crisis in American popular culture, which, among other things, involves the legitimization of a number of right-wing political groups from Latin America.

Scientific and Technological Innovations as a Subject of Historical Policy: Basic Theoretical Models

The purpose of the article is to analyze the use of images of scientific and technological innovations in historical policy. The novelty of such a statement of the question is to distinguish the collective memory of scientific communities and the use of individual memorial images in the context of the formation of the state historical agenda. The author identifies three main models of historical politics: antagonistic, cosmopolitan, agonistic. Within the framework of the antagonistic model, the emphasis is on the competition of various scientific communities for the priority of the most significant discoveries and inventions. The cosmopolitan model focuses on incorporating the achievements of individual communities into the overall process of increasing scientific knowledge on a global scale. The agonistic model allows you to build parallel memorial narratives, but leaves open the question of working out traumatic moments in the history of the development of scientific communities.

Религия и эволюция науки (памяти Пиамы Гайденко)

In 2022, the author of this article spoke at the conference “Breakthrough to the Transcendent” dedicated to the outstanding historian of philosophy and an original Russian thinker – Piama Pavlovna Gaidenko (1934–2021). The speech was expanded by him in the essay “Piama Gaidenko and the philosophers of the Sixties”, published in the Istoriko-Filisofskii Ezhegodnik (Iss. 37). In these texts however, the large-scale scientific work done by P.P. Gaidenko did not find proper coverage. In the current publication, the author is trying to fill this gap. The article is a detailed comparison of two editions: P.P. Gaidenko’s monography “The Evolution of the Concept of Science”, published in 1980, and the book “Philosophical and Religious Origins of Science” (1997), prepared under her sci­entific editorship and with her author’s participation. One of the main ideas de­fended in these works, first covertly, then directly, is the idea that historically the construction of scientific concepts is largely determined by the image of God that culture sets. The author supports this idea, equips it with new arguments and raises it to the interpretation of religious studies as an obligatory prerequisite for a thorough, qualified science. Special attention is paid to the stimulating influence of religion on science, which distinguished the Renaissance and Reformation; the phenomenon of Renaissance Titanism; the socio – cultural context of the scien­tific revolution of the XVI–XVII centuries. A special topic is the methodology of building a memorial narrative and preserving heritage as a living, creatively ef­fective tradition, discussed in the mode of responsible benevolent criticism.

ВІДГОМІН СЕЛЯНСЬКОЇ КАТАСТРОФИ: КОЛЕКТИВІЗАЦІЯ ТА ГОЛОДОМОР В ІСТОРИЧНІЙ ПАМ’ЯТІ ПРИАЗОВСЬКИХ БОЛГАР

The article explores the socio-economic transformations of the 1920s and 1930s in a Bulgarian village in the Northern Azov region, drawing on oral histories. It elucidates the mechanism behind the construction of the "collectivization" image in the historical memory of Ukrainian Bulgarians. The thesis posits the existence of a distinct corpus of oral narratives as an alternative historical and cultural model, contrasting with the official Soviet narrative of "modernization". The narrative portrays the disintegration of the peasant community and the instigation of an atmosphere of mistrust and fear, as recounted in personal stories. The study identifies historical memory narratives about violent collectivization as influential in shaping a complex of socially significant personal stories among Bulgarians in the Northern Azov region. Moreover, by integrating documentary evidence on collectivization and the Holodomor in southern Ukraine, the article highlights the informational potential of oral historical sources. Specifically, it reconstructs the primary stages of the Soviet authorities' defragmentation of peasant society through economic and non-economic pressures. The authors illustrate the process of forming and actively navigating the informational environment among the Bulgarian population in the Northern Azov region, depicting verbal images of collectivization functionaries/activists and the "silent mass" of victims of the economic system's collapse during the Holodomor. The article also delves into the phenomenon of emotional and cultural conflict within the historical memory structure, particularly concerning "Komsomol" functionaries. This investigation considers the respondents' narrative structuring and the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships. Conclusively, the authors assert that the transmission of past images to the younger generation occurred with corresponding emotional and value attitudes, particularly towards disarmament, collectivization, and the Holodomor. These attitudes were notably reinvigorated during the 1990s-2000s, influenced by socio-political and economic transformations.

Representation of a prominent public figure of Yuriy Fedkovych in Chernivtsi’s cultural memory narrative

The body of the article goes on to discuss the problem of a new portrayal and interpretation of a significant impact of the Ukrainian outstanding writer and a public figure Yuriy Fedkovych on the cultural memory of the capital of Bukovyna – Chernivtsi.Since memory policy has become a crucial construct of social practices, the author’s focus revolves around a variety of theoretical perspectives of memory studies and explores the domain of honouring an outstanding public figure. Through the prism of memory studies, the author puts an emphasis on various commemorative practices such as erecting monuments, establishing museums, celebrating anniversaries, arranging mass events, naming cultural, artistic and educational institutions, renaming streets, creating new traditions, etc.Together these studies provide important insights into Yuriy Fedkovych’s invaluable contribution as its editor into the socially and politically integrated contents of the first Ukrainian newspaper «Bukovyna». Being a forerunner of the Ukrainian national revival, Yuriy Fedkovych was deeply concerned with the sufferings and needs of the ordinary peasants of Bukovyna and made his best of involving them in cultivating their national awareness and identity.Noteworthy, the «Bukovynian nightingale’s» literary, political and social legacy earned him deep respect not only among the progressive intelligentsia of Ukraine in late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also our contemporaries’ aspirations to practise societal memories and engrave Yuriy Fedkovych on the individual and collective memory of both Bukovyna and Chernivtsi.The author boils down that the above-said is exemplified, at the city level, in the following commemorative practices: a) caring for a historical graveyard of Yuriy Fedkovych, located in the «Historical and Cultural Reserve “Cemetery in Zelena St.”»; b) arranging and renewing various events and festivities of the cycle of excursions in Yuriy Fedkovych Literary Memorial Museum; c) holding scientific conferences and annual presenting of each of the volumes of the modern five-volume edition of the writer’s works; d) honouring the outstanding public figure’s legacy, in April 1989 Chernivtsi University, one of the oldest classical universities in Ukraine, was named after Yuriy Fedkovych, to commemorate the «Bukovynian Nightingale» among youth and students; e) awarding the best educators of the city with the highest educational prize of the Chernivtsi City Council – Yuriy Fedkovych Award that was established in 1994; f) a solemn meeting of intelligentsia, academia, students and schoolchildren to traditionally award the winners of the Yuriy Fedkovych Literary and Art Prize. The venue of an annual ceremony is the city downtown space near the monument to Yuriy Fedkovych (made of bronze, the sculptor V. Hamal). It should be articulated that this cultural memory space has been conveying a powerful message and bearing strong Ukrainian national energy.