Memory Project Research Articles

BMI1 is associated with CSF amyloid-\u03b2 and rates of cognitive decline in Alzheimer\u2019s disease

BackgroundAccumulating evidence suggests that BMI1 confers protective effects against Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, the mechanism remains elusive. Based on recent pathophysiological evidence, we sought for the first time to identify genetic variants in BMI1 as associated with AD biomarkers, including amyloid-β.MethodsWe used genetic, longitudinal cognition, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker data from participants in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) cohort (N = 1565). First, we performed a gene-based association analysis of common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (minor allele frequency (MAF) > 5%) located within ± 20 kb of the gene boundary of BMI1, an optimal width for including potential regulatory SNPs in the 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTR) of BMI1, with CSF Aβ1-42 levels. Second, we performed cross-sectional and longitudinal association analyses of SNPs in BMI1 with cognitive performance using linear and mixed-effects models. We replicated association of SNPs in BMI1 with cognitive performance in an independent cohort (N=1084), Religious Orders Study and the Rush Memory and Aging Project (ROS/MAP).ResultsGene-based genetic association analysis showed that BMI1 was significantly associated with CSF Aβ1-42 levels after adjusting for multiple testing using permutation (permutation-corrected p value=0.005). rs17415557 in BMI1 showed the most significant association with CSF Aβ1-42 levels. Participants with minor alleles of rs17415557 have increased CSF Aβ1-42 levels compared to those with no minor alleles. Further analysis identified and replicated the minor allele of rs17415557 as being significantly associated with slower cognitive decline rates in AD.ConclusionsOur findings provide fundamental evidence that BMI1 rs17415557 may serve as a protective mechanism related to AD pathogenesis, which supports the results of previous studies linking BMI1 to protection against AD.

Future memory: a digital humanities approach for the preservation and presentation of the history of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes

ABSTRACT We describe the concepts, methodology, technology, and practice of a user-centric and historical space-oriented approach towards Historical and Cultural Learning (HCL). The Future Memory project pursues the unifying hypothesis that physical space can play a critical role in the authentication and education of this singular historical event, or space as a frame for memory formation and a source of authentication. We illustrate these aspects in the context of concrete Future Memory projects realized over the last ten years in collaboration with several memorial sites, museums, and archives. Based on these experiences, we subsequently analyze the lessons learned and future challenges.

Appetite comes with eating. The never ending digital edition of the Codex Pelavicino

The paper presents the potential means of utilizing digital edition tools by retracing the process of the Codice Pelavicino digital edition. We will also explore the related issues of coding, output, easiness of use, relationship with users. The paper presents the reworking of a lecture presented at the webinar “Medieval archival sources in digital environment. The challenge of processing and visualizing semi-structured data , organized on 22-23 June 2020 by the Digital Culture Laboratory (University of Pisa) and by the head of the Engineering Historical Memory project. The aim is to promote future collaboration and experimentation initiatives in the field of processing and extraction of information from semi-structured editions of archival documents.

Introduction: “Medieval archival sources in the digital world. The challenge of treating and visualizing semi-structured data”

The webinar Medieval archival sources in the digital world. The challenge of treating and visualizing semi-structured data, organized by the Laboratorio di Cultura Digitale and the head of the Engineering Historical Memory project, was held on 22-23 June 2020. This thematic dossier aims to offer a brief account of the results of the workshop held on a virtual platform, with particular attention to future collaboration and experimentation initiatives in the field of processing and extracting information from semi-structured editions of archival documents. Advanced functionalities of this type are in fact essential to broaden the use of digital editions of archival sources and other written documents, making them more flexible and open to algorithms' reading tools. The central problem concerns the relationship between coding and the creation of interfaces that are as simple and immediate as possible, in which the user (human or artificial) can intuitively access.

Sacred memory, creole orientalism and India in the plantationscape of Mauritius

This article disentangles the relationship between memory and the sacred through the life and selected writings of Léoville L’Homme (1857–1928), who rose to prominence as poet and journalist in the 19th century as sugar production expanded in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. A man of colour and a Christian, L’Homme instrumentalised genealogy, cultural memory and the sacred in the vindication of exclusive forms of social justice in what I call the Mauritian plantationscape. His carefully-crafted sacred memory project, heavily modulated by French and British Orientalism, and characterised by tension between memory and the sacred, resulted in the perpetuation of discursive and colonial injustice against India, the homeland of his grandmother, and Indian indentured labourers. After identifying signs of trauma underlying his strained cultural memory landscape and implication, I argue that the organic creolisation present in the colony intervenes to turn the Hindu Goddess Sita, with whom L’Homme sought poetic intimacy, into a symbol of desire for India. This symbol impels an intercultural dialogue where Christianity and Hinduism meet to repair and bestow a reparative vector upon sacred memory. Intercultural dialogue creolises Orientalism, L’Homme’s primary portal into Indian cultural memory, and Creole Orientalism impedes cultural erasure. This sacred and inherently gendered creole cultural memory matrix redresses L’Homme’s relationship with India, his Otherness and Indian cultural memory. It injects an ethical economy in his activism that promises new definitions of a Mauritian collective ahead of decolonisation which remain germane to considerations of identity in the multicultural island’s post-colonial era.

Review: “Remember My Name: Dinah’s Story Performance and Panel Discussion.” Stenton, The Dinah Memorial Project and Inequity in Bronze: The Plantation Memorial Project

Review: “Remember My Name: Dinah’s Story Performance and Panel Discussion.” <i>Stenton, The Dinah Memorial Project</i> and <i>Inequity in Bronze: The Plantation Memorial Project</i>

Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss

Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss

Memorializing Pulse

Since 2016, the city of Orlando, FL, has remembered the Pulse nightclub massacre through memorial projects honoring the victims and survivors. The process of remembering and memorializing trauma is contentious; debates over how, where, who, and what to remember are about emotions, economics, and politics. Knowing that meaning making and memory are ongoing processes, I use the circuit of culture model to navigate my city’s processes and places of memorializing by visiting and interpreting different sites of memory. I argue for the power of the vernacular memorial, rather than the state-sanctioned, as a more inclusive, living form of memory.

Memoir of Moses: The Literary Creation of Covenantal Memory in Deuteronomy

Memoir of Moses: The Literary Creation of Covenantal Memory in Deuteronomy

Shanghai memory as a digital humanities platform to rebuild the history of the city

Abstract With the development of digital technology, Memory Projects, such as the American Memory and the Venice Time Machine, have been explored continually as typical digital humanity projects. In these projects, humanists are able to look into the thousand-year-history with a macro view by a ‘data telescope’, as well as numerous micro views by ‘data microscopes’. This article investigates representative historical memory and city memory projects from over the past 20 years and analyses the purpose, investigation, cooperation, methods, implementation, and technical routes adopted. The following problems are apparent: resource decentralization and fragmentation, duplication of database construction, single-user service mode and low utilization rate of cultural heritage resources, etc. This study provides an overall technical route to solve these problems by examining ongoing practice. The Shanghai Memory Project, undertaken by Shanghai Library, uses knowledge reorganization and data reconciling technologies such as Big Data, Semantic Web, and Knowledge Graph to construct an overarching Humanities Research Environment, which is co-constructing, sharing, and interconnecting to avoid problems of resource decentralization and database duplication. The Project provides a user service model, which combines the library creating knowledge with user-generated content. Implementing data visualization technologies, such as AR, VR, etc., the project improves the collection display and promotes the utilization of the resources. The Urban Memory Project is a comprehensive program that relies on cooperation and interdisciplinary collaboration, co-construction, and the sharing of data. Meanwhile, an increasing number of Urban Memory Projects play a significant role in helping to develop the Digital Humanities’ infrastructure.

Women Mobilizing Memory ed. by Ayse Gul Altinay et al. (review)

Reviewed by: Women Mobilizing Memory ed. by Ayse Gul Altinay et al. Helen Makhdoumian Ayse Gul Altinay, María José Contreras, Marianne Hirsch, Jean Howard, Banu Karaca, and Alisa Solomon, editors. Women Mobilizing Memory. Columbia UP, 2019. 544p. Authored by scholars working in different disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as artists, curators, and activists, Women Mobilizing Memory’s twenty-six essays are organized thematically: “Disrupting Sites,” “Performing Protest,” “Interfering Images,” and “Rewriting Lives.” Its transnational approach studies remembrance practices concerning violence and destruction in North and South America, Europe, and Turkey. This global scope allows conversations about the history and lived aftermath of state terror including murder, forced disappearance, and torture in Chile; enslavement, anti-Black racism, and violence towards Black Americans; practices that facilitate the legal, social, and material death of trans women in Turkey; and gender violence and femicide in Argentina. Moreover, the objects of study range from art to photography, literature, performance, museums, monuments, collective activist and protest efforts, return trips to lost homelands, and more. [End Page 97] This breadth in content will appeal to readers well versed in trauma and memory studies and those who are new to methodologies and theories in these fields. Marianne Hirsch, who developed the theoretical framework of “postmemory” to articulate the intergenerational transmission of collective traumatic memory using the case of the Holocaust, penned the introduction. Hirsch recounts the origins of Women Mobilizing Memory, defines the three words that constitute its title, and provides an overview of the authors’ intellectual contributions to the field of contemporary cultural studies. The collection seeks to “help define the parameters of what we might think of as a feminist ‘ethics of transculturality’” (12). Hirsch clarifies that to put into practice a feminist ethics of transculturality, the authors take up “mobilizing” to mean “activating, setting in motion, [or] moving” (2). More specifically, the essays demonstrate the mobilization of memory for justice and futurity, to confront state and political agents’ silencing of dark pasts, and to form communities of solidarity. Women Mobilizing Memory also provides visual supplements. “Treasures” features artwork from Germany-based, Argentinian Armenian multimedia artist Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, showcasing items from Der-Meguerditchian’s project for the prize-winning Armenity pavilion at the fifty-sixth Venice Biennale in 2015. Another essay, “Blank: An Attempt at a Conversation,” features blank pages submitted by five art students from the Fine Arts program at Mardin Artuklu University. Asked to provide a submission regarding violence centered on Kurdish communities, these students responded: “You are in a hurry but we have an emergency. Our testimony is five blank A4 pages” (n.p./324). Additional images of works by other artists are woven throughout: photographs of some of the embodied experiences of memory work detailed in the chapters; memorial projects at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile to commemorate those who were detained, tortured, and killed there from September to November 1973; theatrical performances that shed light on state violence around AIDS; environmental degradation or what Robert Nichols calls “slow violence”; the gendered labor of agricultural field workers; and the weekly vigil of the Saturday Mothers/People at Galatasaray Square in Istanbul, where the act of peacefully sitting and holding photographs [End Page 98] facilitates public awareness of the disappearance of Kurds by the Turkish state. The editors’ attention to building a conversation among senior and emerging scholars and their goal of making meaning by juxtaposing while honoring differences in the selected case studies of subjugation and survival make Women Mobilizing Memory a timely contribution to the fields of trauma, memory, gender, and feminist studies. As with any edited book, especially one that foregrounds a global scope of study, there are bound to be histories that are not taken up. For instance, it does not include an essay devoted to gendered memory concerning the genocide and territorial dispossession of Indigenous peoples of North America. At the same time, María Solded Falabella Luco’s “Hilando en la Memoria: Weaving Songs of Resistance in Contemporary Mapuche Political Cultural Activism” illuminates Chilean state violence and resistance to this “many-sided oppression” by focusing on the “ongoing conflict or war with the Mapuche, the country’s most populous first...

Memory Book as a New Genre of Illness Writing: How a Ugandan Mother Wrote about HIV

A memory book is a therapeutic document and personal testament – a workbook written, most commonly, by a HIV-positive caregiver or parent for their child, about the family’s background and the parent’s life experiences, to guide the child in the parent’s absence. In Uganda, memory projects first emerged in 1998 as public health outreach for people with HIV. They encourage writers, often agrarian widows with limited literacy, to deliver their messages to their children and the world. While reports have focused on the psychosocial support the projects provide to the beneficiaries, the content, and modes of representation in individual books, have received little attention. This article undertakes a close textual analysis of the words and images in one memory book, written in English by a subsistence farmer with seven years’ schooling. Using the frameworks of narrative therapy and illness writing, it examines how this reticent writer represents, obliquely, through textual gaps and contradictions, her painful memories of her child’s abuse by her husband and her co-wife and the difficult experience of living with HIV. This article argues that memory books as a new genre of illness writing can help less literate, less heard people with HIV write their stories in their own words and can help us, the readers, understand their experiences and lifeworlds from their perspectives.

A work of death: martyrdom, myth and dead women in contemporary Spanish film

ABSTRACT In the same moment that the Spanish government passed the Ley de memoria histórica, recognizing the rights of those persecuted during the Civil War and dictatorship, the Spanish Church escalated its own project of remembering, more than doubling between 2007 and 2013 the number of beatifications of clergy killed during the war. This discordant combination of circumstances has been reflected in cultural production where cinematic representations of the Civil War dead have often reanimated tropes of the Catholic popular imagination. While these films mark a broader cultural move away from the Church rhetoric of sacrifice and martyrdom and towards human rights frameworks as a way to deal with past traumas, their reliance on the culturally charged motifs of traditional hagiography has meant that contemporary martyr narratives remain entangled in older national myths. Taking examples from Emilio Martínez Lázaro's 2007 film Las 13 rosas, Mikel Rueda's Izarren Argia (2010) and Benito Zambrano's La voz dormida (2011), this article will demonstrate how the interpenetration of opposing discourses both undermines the films’ contribution to the project of historical memory while also offering powerful moments of reflection and empathy at the intersection of traditional martyrology and cosmopolitan memory practices.

Remembering Emmett Till

Remembering Emmett Till

ПАМЯТНИК ИМПЕРАТОРУ АЛЕКСАНДРУ II В ЗЛАТОУСТЕ: ПРИМЕР ПРОВИНЦИАЛЬНОЙ КОММЕМОРАЦИИ В ДОРЕВОЛЮЦИОННОЙ РОССИИ

The article examines the commemorative practices of residents of the Zlatoust district of the Ufa province, aimed at perpetuating the memory of Emperor Alexander II. The stages of the commemorative process are highlight-ed: identification of initiators and formulation of motives for the monument's installation, formation of a Committee, collection of donations, construction of the monument, and its opening. In 1881, former craftsmen of the Zlatoust factory initiated the installation of a monument to the deceased monarch. The monument was an expression of grati-tude for the Great reforms, namely the abolition of serfdom and compulsory labor in factories. The process of in-stalling the monument took ten years, which was caused by the lack of experience of farmers in implementing such memorial projects, ambitious plans, high cost of the project, the lack of large donors and orientation to local commu-nities within the County with timid attempts to reach the level of the province. Functionally, the monument became the center of commemorative practices, repeated actions of commemoration of the deceased Emperor and broadcast-ing the image of the monarch with the inclusion of regional specifics. The installation of the monument to the Em-peror in Zlatoust served as an example for other cities: copies of the monument were installed in Yekaterinburg, in the village of Sorochinsky in the Buzuluk district of the Samara province, and there were plans to install the monu-ment at the Miass plant. The monument to Alexander II in Zlatoust was demolished shortly after the establishment of Soviet power in the city in the summer of 1919. Studying the memorialization of Alexander II in pre-revolutionary Russia, determining the geographical and ethnic boundaries of the area of monuments, as well as interpreting the symbolic content of «places of memory», is useful for studying the process of forming national identity.

Social Framework of Collective Memory and Cognitive Problems of Historical Knowledge

The article demonstrates that the cognitive possibilities of historical memory and “living history”, which generates the agenda, questionnaires and source strategies of historians, are closely connected with the social framework of historical memory and, accordingly, with the self-identification of historians. They form cognitive maps that regulate the cognitive activity of a historian. It is shown that the social framework of historical memory within the crisis of globalization is changing rapidly, creating unusual, contradictory and sometimes absurd constellations. This topic is studied in the context of the history of discursive hegemony in historical memory by analyzing the ideas of A. Assmann, J. Laroche, A. Cento Bull and H. L. Hansen, who criticize the current state of historical memory and suggest new versions of it, based on the change of social frameworks and forms of discourse. The project of cosmopolitan memory created by the latter, its advantages and disadvantages are evaluated. The tools of analysis are N. Elias&amp;apos;s theory of “civilization process”, G. Bateson&amp;apos;s theory of schismogenesis, E. Erikson&amp;apos;s theory of self-identification, E. N. Shulga&amp;apos;s concept of pre-understanding. It is shown that cosmopolitan memory, while remaining within the framework of hegemonic discourse, reproduces antagonistic forms of memory. The most productive are the approaches of A. Assmann and S. Conrad, who carefully criticize the situation of cosmopolitan memory, seem to be the most productive. Cultural and historiographical processes in Germany, the British Empire and Southeast Asia served as the main material for the study. The works of N. Ferguson, close to the imperial historical school and the neo-Asianism (reorientalism) of Lee Kuan Yew, in which the values of empire, colonialism and traditionalism are defended in opposition to the ideal of human rights, have been analyzed. It is noted that historians strive to distinguish between the universalism of the idea of humanity and cultural pluralism in dialogue about human rights, which prevents criticism of alien or seemingly alien values outside a situation of cooperation and consensus. The ideal of cross historical memory as the historian&amp;apos;s optimal cognitive tool is put forward.

ТАКАЯ РАЗНАЯ ПРАВДА: ПАМЯТЬ О ВОЙНЕ В ДОКУМЕНТАЛЬНОМ КИНО 1970-х гг.

In memory studies carried out on the material of Germany, several basic strategies were noted for how society survived the war and dealt with the traumatic experiences; the post-war escape and forgetting were replaced by the glorification of the past. According to Aleida Assmann, the protests of 1968 showed that the heroic memorial project was not effective and the society was still ready for violence. The “ethical turn” in Germany was associated with the transition to a policy of repentance, with the idea of a “common catastrophe”, with a willingness to share responsibility for violence and solidarity based on compassion for a common sorrow. The aim of this article is to determine how relevant the patterns Assman sees analyzing the experience of Germany were for other countries. Can we say that the experience of trauma processing was universal? How do the social structure, cultural heritage, the peculiarities of military operations, the political situation influence the nature of commemoration? The article uses methods of narrative analysis in film studies and viewer reception analysis to analyze, based on the techniques of contextualization, how the film was entangled in changing the social structure and national political culture. The research is based on the case study approach. I examine the case of one documentary film: analyze the materials of public discussion, interviews with the creators, reviews of film critics, and published viewer reviews. I argue how the discussion of Marcel Ophuls’ film The Sorrow and the Pity: The Chronicle of a French City under the Occupation (Le Chagrin et la pitié: chronique d’une ville française sous l’occupation, 1969) changed the way we talk about war affecting professional historiography, public policy, public opinion. People discussed the traumatic experience of the war seen through the eyes of civilians, whose memory of the bombing of cities, the rape of women, forced deportation, hunger, speculation, and other wartime crimes became the object of public discussion, the borders between “us” and “them” lost their national identity, and resistance to fascism lost its features of a united frontier brotherhood. The film showed that the prejudices that split French society during the war did not lose their effect. It was prejudices, not propaganda, that possessed a powerful mobilizing force, pushing people to violence. The creative experiments of the left-wing documentary filmmakers aimed to show that film and television could turn from an instrument of domination and suppression into an instrument of research on social reality and a form of political interaction. France was supposed to see “public opinion” in realism (cinéma vérité), not in the format of elite-controlled news. Marcel Ophuls made the film about the inconsistency of the French Fifth Republic.

On the Ways of Comprehension of the Civil War in Russia: Key Problems and Historical Memory

This article describes the all-Russian scientific conference “International Intervention and Civil War in Russia and the Russian North: key problems, historical memory, and lessons of history”, held in Arkhangelsk, September 10–11, 2020. Co-organizers of the conference were the Russian Military-Historical Society and its Arkhangelsk branch, the Government of the Arkhangelsk Region, the M. V. Lomonosov Northern (Arctic) Federal University , and the Association of the Russian Civil War Scholars. Conference sponsors were the Russian Military- Historical Society and the Government of the Arkhangelsk Region. Established and younger scholars from 14 regions of Russia, as well as from Ukraine and Norway, took part in the conference and its proceedings. Conference participators considered the key problems of genesis, origins, and causes for the Russian Civil War, its modern conceptualization, the role of international intervention in Russia and the Russian North, results, consequences, and historical lessons of this war. Special attention was given to preparing of Volume XII (in two books), Civil War in Russia, 1917–1922, of the 20-volume academic series History of Russia and problems of historical and cultural memory of the Russian Civil War. Four sections and three roundtables considered questions of the dialectical relationship of international intervention and Civil War in Russia and the Russian North; of international, national, regional, and local dimensions of the Civil War; and of the individual at war. Conference participators pointed out the necessity of responsible, competent, and objective historical studies of the Russian Civil War, an attitude of care towards existing monuments and memorials, and strict examination and scientific expertise of new memorial projects devoted to this war.

Aproximación a la memoria histórica: dicotomía memoria-historia, diferencias entre verdad jurídica y verdad histórica, y dilemas que se presentan

Este artículo pretende un acercamiento al concepto de memoria histórica, cómo surge y se desarrolla históricamente a partir de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, además de evidenciar el viraje que produjo la memoria en el campo de la historiografía y en el ámbito político. También busca entender por qué son importantes en la actualidad los procesos de reconstrucción de la memoria histórica y los dilemas político-ideológicos y epistemológicos que presenta, y su relación con el problema de la verdad (jurídica e histórica), entendida durante mucho tiempo con el esquema sujeto-objeto. La investigación es de un enfoque hermenéutico-analítico de las fuentes bibliográficas. A partir de allí, se examina el problema de la verdad en la memoria histórica, y las diferencias entre verdad jurídica y la verdad histórica que confluyen en los proyectos de memoria histórica. La memoria histórica es importante en las sociedades contemporáneas que advierten en los procesos de construcción de la memoria, por acontecimientos a las vulneraciones de los derechos humanos y a la dignidad humana, un potencial para la reconciliación, pacificación y las reivindicaciones de las víctimas, mediante la tutela del derecho a la verdad, a la justicia, a la reparación y a las garantías de no repetición.

Reconstituting the Cultural Geography in Zimbabwe: Place Renaming in Zimbabwe’s ‘New Dispensation’

ABSTRACT Regime changes and power transfers usually engender an extensive reordering of the cultural geography. Incoming political regimes usually reconfigure commemorative landscapes to symbolically dismantle icons and landmarks of the previous political regimes and herald their arrival on the political scene. The new regime in Zimbabwe that assumes power in November 2017 reconstituted the commemorative space according to its sociopolitical logics, commemorative priorities, and assumptions of power. This article uses the textual approach to the politics of place naming to interrogate the varied ways the Mnangagwa regime used to reinscribe the cultural landscape producing a new memorial landscape in the aftermath of the upstaging of Robert Mugabe in November 2017. The new regime symbolically constructed the imaginative national geography in a relational manner that differed from the one instituted by the Mugabe regime. The main observation in this article is that place renaming is not merely as a reflection of, but also integral to, the politics of ‘transformation’ in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. The new place names are saturated with messages that indicate official versions that prescribe new rules on the reading of the past. The new toponymic order symbolically replaced the Mugabe political hegemony with the Mnangagwa one, increased the visibility of women, commemorated a new set of heroes, including those that had suffered systematic exclusion in nationalist discourses, and renamed ‘unusual’ places that the previous regime never considered in the process of recasting the cultural geography. The memorial project involved a highly politicised nomination process that served the interests of the ruling political elites. It is, therefore, problematic that most critical enquiries into this phase in the Zimbabwean political landscape have not focussed on these cultural transformations.