Twentieth Century Wars in European Memory

In this first volume of the new series Studies in Social Sciences, Philosophy and History of Ideas, Niznik (European studies, Polish Academy of Sciences) presents 15 papers from an international conference on "War and Memory: artistic and cultural representations of individual, collective and national memories in 20th-century Europe at war," jointly organized by the Institute of Philosophy and sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Queen's U. of Northern Ireland). The papers are organized into thematic sections exploring: the symbolism of material objectifications of the memory of war, visual representations of the memory of war, "memory for sale," memory within geographic space, and the individual experience and the collective memory. Examples of specific topics include the Maginot line in memory and tourism, facially disfigured veterans as walking reminders of war, photographic and cinematographic representation of the Armenian genocide, war tourism in Poland and Germany, Slovenian history and collective memory of World War I in inter-war Yugoslavia, representation of the memory of Jews in physical space as an element of Polish identity, and aspects of Czechoslovak cultural life in Britain during World War II. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jozef Niznik is Professor and the head of European Studies Unit at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. He studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Warsaw. His work contains over 90 major publications in Polish and English in the area of philosophy, sociology of knowledge and European integration.