Collective Traumas is about the traumatic European history of the 20th century - war, genocide, dictatorship, ethnic cleansing - and how individuals, communities and nations have dealt with their dark past through remembrance, historiography and legal settlements. Memories, and especially collective memories, serve as foundations for national identities and are politically charged. Regardless whether memory is used to support or to challenge established ideologies, it is inevitably subject to political tensions. Consequently, memory, history and amnesia tend to be used and abused for different political and ideological purposes. From the perspectives of historical, literary and visual studies the essays focus on how the experiences of war and profound conflict have been represented and remembered in different national cultures and communities. This volume is a vital contribution to memory studies and trauma theory. Collective Traumas is a result of the multi-disciplinary research project on Memory Culture that was initiated in 2002 at Karlstad University, Sweden. A previous publication with Peter Lang is Memory Work: The Theory and Practice of Memory (2005).

This volume is a collection of scholarly articles that maps the concept of memory across a number of academic disciplines. Drawing from a range of academic areas, including Cultural Theory, Film Studies, History, History of Ideas, Literature, Media Studies, Music and Philosophy, the book will provide readers with an engaging introduction to the growing field of Memory Studies. Each of the eight articles approaches the subject of memory from the perspectives of a specific discipline with the broad aim being to identify how and why memory has been important for the particular field being represented.