Memory and Political Change

While political systems may change comparatively quickly, the social and cultural processes of adaptation and transformation take considerably longer. This volume explores memory as both a medium of and an impediment to change, offering an inroad into the problems, mechanisms and patterns involved in the complex processes that accompany the transition from authoritarian to democratic structures. Written by authors from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, the essays chart the terrain and supply well-documented case studies to extend knowledge on the relationship between social and political memory and the transition process.

ALEIDA ASSMANN is Professor of English Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She has been Guest Professor at Rice, Princeton, Yale, Chicago and Vienna. She is co-editor of Memory in a Global Age (with Sebastian Conrad, 2010)but the majority of herpublications up until now have been in German, and include some of the most important work in Memory Studies of the last decade.

LINDA SHORTT is Research Assistant at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She holds a PhD in German and Cultural Studies and is co-editor of Debating German Cultural Identity (with Fox andJames-Chakraborty, 2011).