Weird question, I noticed you said you work on collective memory (yay!). I'm thinking of writing my senior undergraduate thesis on the memory of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in the two German states. I was wondering if you had any suggestions for just general readings on collective memory.
Hello, first of all, many thanks for your question. I’m actually very exited to be asked about something that relates to my thesis in some way.
Second, this is such a great and interesting topic! You should have no problem finding works in which to situate your argument. There is such a large historiography and collective memory and commemoration!
Third, before I make my suggestions, I would advise you to browse the blog @historicity-was-already-taken, the moderator is a public historian who is well-versed in these topics. You might find some works in her bibliography useful.
Now, on the question of collective memory in the two Germanys and in the re-united nation:
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (1998) by Jeffrey Herf
“Historians and Nation Building in Germany after Reunification” by Stefan Berger in Imagining Nations (1998) edited by Geoffrey Cubitt
Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich (2001) by Bill Niven
Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity (2001) Siobhan Kattago
“Coming to Terms with the Past: Illusions of Remembering, Ways of Forgetting Nazism in West Germany” (1993) by Alf Lüdtke“The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany’s ‘Crisis Years’ and West German National Identity” (1996) by Elizabeth Heineman
“Genre Memories and Memory Genres: A Dialogical Analysis of May 8, 1945 Commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany” (1999) by Jeffrey K. Olick
As you can see, some of these are a bit dated but it’s important to recognize key contributions such as those in your own work. You can then supplement you paper with more recent monographies and articles.
Now, as for works on collective memory:
On Collective Memory [1925] 1992 by Maurice Halbwachs edited and translated from French by Lewis A. Coser (I’m not certain that it will be necessary for your to read Halbwachs. You should simply be aware of his importance in memory studies.)
How Societies Remember (1989) Paul Connerton
The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (1993) James E. Young
Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (1996) by John R. Gillis
History and Memory after Auschwitz (1998) by Dominick LaCapra
Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (2003) by Andreas Huyssen
State Repression and the Labors of Memory (2003) by Elizabeth Jelin
Memory, history, forgetting (2004) by Paul Ricœur (if you are feeling ambitious)
Memorial museums : the global rush to commemorate atrocities (2007) by Paul Harvey Williams
DifficultHeritage : Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (2009) by Sharon Macdonald
The Collective Memory Reader (2011) edited by Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, Daniel Levy
The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (2014) Marianne Hirsch (While I don’t know the direction you plan to take with your paper, this is still a classic that had to be mentioned.)
Writing the History of Memory (2014) edited by Stefan Berger, Bill Niven
“Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire” (1989) by Pierre Nora (I’m not convinced about this article’s usefulness but since Nora will be cited by everyone and he is part of the memory studies canon, you should be familiar with his work)
“Trauma, Absence, Loss” (1999) by Dominick LaCapra
“Memory, history and the claims of the past” (2008) by Ross Poole
*You will notice that while some scholars talk about “collective memory” others refer to it as “cultural memory,” “social memory” or even “collected memory.” Memory studies is a multidisciplinary field. Scholars have yet to better theorize it. Although you don’t need to take position on this debate (especially not for a paper of this size), it might be a good idea to explain, even if very briefly, why you favour a particular term. It may simply be that you want to align your work with that of a particular scholar, make that clear in your introduction.
Finally, I hope she won’t mind but I know @virtual-tonks is German, perhaps a little conversation with her might help you better imagine your project.
That is all. I hope you find this useful! Good luck on your paper!
