"Most scholars argue that a nation, by definition, has economic, cultural, and ethnic components.

Concentrated on the meanings and contexts of memory in literature, history, cognitive science and philosophy, primarily in the Middle Ages, this collective monograph offers a variety of ideas and approaches to memory in connection to identity, the past, and immortality. Contributors include Peter Agócs, Michal Ajvaz, Ivan M. Havel, Michael W. Herren, Gerhard Jaritz, Lenka Karfíková, Zsuzsanna Kiséry, Regina Koycheva, Csaba Németh, Sylvain Piron, Tamás Visi, and Rafał Wójcik.

In an ancient account of painting’s origins, a woman traces the shadow of her departing lover on the wall in an act that anticipates future grief and commemoration. Lisa Saltzman shows here that nearly two thousand years after this story was first told, contemporary artists are returning to similar strategies of remembrance, ranging from vaudevillian silhouettes and sepulchral casts to incinerated architectures and ghostly processions. Exploring these artists’ work, Saltzman demonstrates that their methods have now eclipsed painting and traditional sculpture as preeminent forms of visual representation. She pays particular attention to the groundbreaking art of Krzysztof Wodiczko, who is known for his projections of historical subjects; Kara Walker, who creates powerful silhouetted images of racial violence in American history; and Rachel Whiteread, whose work centers on making casts of empty interior spaces. Each of the artists Saltzman discusses is struggling with the roles that history and memory have come to play in an age when any historical statement is subject to question and doubt. In identifying this new and powerful movement, she provides a framework for understanding the art of our time.

The novels of Oscar Hijuelos and Cristina Garcia are masterpieces of memory. Arguably the most gifted and inarguably the most mainstream of Cuban-American novelists, Hijuelos and Garcia write lush, sensual, sophisticated explorations of the personal, familial and cultural pasts. Unlike so much of Cuban-American literature, however, these novels are not hospitable to unalloyed nostalgia; they are, in fact, profoundly suspicious of the tendency of nostalgia to distort the facts of the historical past for the political interests of the present.

With photographs and architectural plans never before published, paired with comments in the very voices of those who witnessed the event, this book will stand apart from all the rest on the 10th anniversary of that world-changing event.

The theme of Forgiveness and Remembrance is the complex moral psychology of forgiving and remembering in both personal and political contexts. It offers an original account of the moral psychology of interpersonal forgiveness and explores its role in transitional societies. The book also examines the symbolic moral significance of memorialization in these societies and reflects on its relationship to forgiveness.

What is the symbolic impact of the Vietnam War Memorial? How does television change our engagement with the past? Can the efforts to wipe out Communist legacies succeed? Should victims of the Holocaust be celebrated as heroes or as martyrs? These questions have a great deal in common, yet they are typically asked separately by people working in distinct research areas in different disciplines. Frames of Remembrance shares ideas and concerns across such divides.

Do you have problems remembering birthdays and anniversaries, appointments and errands? Do you sometimes find yourself in a room, and wonder why you're there? Do you end up doing things twice because you've forgotten you've already done them? Of all the memory failures that plague us, forgetting our intentions -- birthdays, appointments, errands we mean to do -- is the greatest, closely followed by those moments of absentmindedness when we lose track of what we're doing. The special problem of these common memory failures is that they are failures that are often very obvious to others. More than any other memory failure, forgetting the future makes others feel hurt and annoyed, causing us regret and embarrassment. And absentmindedness can not simply be irritating, but dangerous. Many people think that these sorts of problems are inevitable -- a natural consequence of getting older, or going through menopause, or because of some 'natural' personality flaw. But remembering future events, and remembering what you're doing or have just done, are memory tasks that, like any other memory task, are subject to your skills. Skills can be learned. To learn or improve a skill, you need to know effective strategies and how to practice them. This book helps you understand these memory and attention failures, and shows you how to overcome them. As always with the Mempowered books, this fully referenced book, based on the work of cognitive researchers, helps you permanently improve your memory skills by explaining what you need to know to use these strategies effectively and appropriately. Keywords: remembering intentions, remembering appointments, how to overcome absent minded, how to overcome forgetfulness, absentmindedness, short-term memory problems, action slips, prospective memory