As sites of turbulence and transformation, cities are machines for forgetting. And yet archiving and exhibiting the presence of the past remains a key cultural, political and economic activity in many urban environments. This book takes the example of Berlin over the past four decades to chart how the memory culture of the city has responded to the challenges and transformations thrown up by the changing political, social and economic organization of the built environment. The book focuses on the visual culture of the city (architecture, memorials, photography and film). It argues that the recovery of the experience of time is central to the practices of an emergent memory culture in a contemporary 'overexposed' city, whose spatial and temporal boundaries have long since disintegrated.

Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes of consumerism.

As a continuation of ‘Identity of Cities and City of Identities’, this book covers the arguments around the memory-experience-cognition nexus concerning palimpsests and urban places. As cities experience transitional phases of growth, development, decline, and decay, the author urges considering the notion of urban memory in place-making strategies and design decision-making processes. These explorations would add value to primary fields of architecture, architectural history, cognitive science, human geography, and urbanism. Divided into eight chapters, this book puts together a comprehensive knowledge of urban memory in city transitions. By studying urban memory, the author delves into conceptions of mental mapping, knowledge of environments, cognition of places, and the perceptual dimension of urbanism. Undoubtedly, urban memory plays a significant part in the future movements of humanistic urbanism. Given the significances of scale, pace, and mode of city transitions globally, we should remember who are the ultimate users of those living environments. Therefore, in this book, the author debates two contradictions of ‘memory of place vs. place of memory’, and ‘significance of place vs. place of significance’. Each of these is believed to be a paradox of its own, indicating places are significant through the systematic networks of cities, memories are meaningful through the neural information processing, and place memories are the essence of urban identities. The book's ultimate goal is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the space-time frame of place in making memorable places. Through the comprehensive explorations of many global examples, we can evaluate the significance of place in mind more carefully. This is narrated based on the recognition of nostalgia in cities, socio-temporal qualities in places, and the network of processes in our minds. In return, the aim is to provide new knowledge to make memorable cities, enhance social experiences, and capture and value the significance of place in mind.

Structures of Memory turns to the landscape of contemporary Berlin, particularly places marked by the presence of the Nazi regime, in order to understand how some places of great cruelty or great heroism are forgotten by all but eyewitnesses, while others become the site of public ceremonies, museums, or commemorative monuments.

An innovative exploration of German memory, national identity, and modernity embodied in the public spaces of the new capital.

Hidden Berlin brings to life the city's tumultuous history by tracing the evolution of six iconic locations: the reconstructed City Palace, the Berlin Wall, the Nazi Olympic Stadium, Potsdamer Platz, the Brandenburg Gate, and the recreated Nikolaiviertel. In exploring each of these areas, Hidden Berlin illustrates how Berlin has become one of Europe's most complex and dynamic cities. Richly illustrated with images and maps, the volume engages readers through detailed timelines and activities. Additional locations of interest and a bibliography present opportunities for readers to explore on their own. A companion website provides a host of internet-based activities, suggestions for readings, and supplementary resources for each chapter: www.hiddenberlinbook.wordpress.com. Hidden Berlin is an engaging volume for courses on the culture of Berlin or modern Germany, students studying abroad, and visitors to the city who want an enlightened experience.

Cultural memory is a framework which elucidates the relationship between the past and the present: essentially, why, how, and with what results certain pieces of information are remembered. This volume brings together distinguished classicists from a variety of sub-disciplines to explore cultural memory in the Roman Republic and the Age of Augustus. It provides an excellent and accessible starting point for readers who are new to the intersection between cultural memory theory and ancient Rome, whilst also appealing to the seasoned scholar. The chapters delve deep into memory theory, going beyond the canonical texts of Jan Assmann and Pierre Nora and pushing their terminology towards Basu's dispositifs, Roller's intersignifications, Langlands' sites of exemplarity, and Erll's horizons. This innovative framework enables a fresh analysis of both fragmentary texts and archaeological phenomena not discussed elsewhere.

A study of the archival turn in contemporary German memory culture, drawing on recent memorials, documentaries, and prose narratives that engage with the material legacy of National Socialism and the Holocaust.

Since unification, eastern Germany has witnessed a rapidly changing memorial landscape, as the fate of former socialist monuments has been hotly debated and new commemorative projects have met with fierce controversy. Memorializing the GDR provides the first in-depth study of this contested arena of public memory, investigating the individuals and groups devoted to the creation or destruction of memorials as well as their broader aesthetic, political, and historical contexts. Emphasizing the interrelationship of built environment, memory and identity, it brings to light the conflicting memories of recent German history, as well as the nuances of national and regional constructions of identity.

What connects garbage dumps in New York, bomb sites in Baghdad, and skyscrapers in São Paulo? How is contemporary visual culture – extending from art and architecture to film and digital media – responding to new forms of violence associated with global and globalizing cities? Addressing such questions, this book is the first interdisciplinary volume to examine the complex relationship between globalization, violence, and the visual culture of cities. Violence – in both material and cultural forms – has been a prominent and endemic feature of urban life in the global metropolitan era. Focusing on visual culture and offering a strong humanities perspective that is currently lacking in existing scholarship, this book seeks to understand how the violent effects of globalization have been represented, theorized, and experienced across a wide range of cultural contexts and urban locations in Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East. Organized around three interrelated themes – fear, memory, and spectacle – essay topics range from military targeting in Baghdad, carceral urbanism in São Paulo, and the Paris banlieue riots, to the security aesthetics of G8 summits, the architecture of urban paranoia, and the cultural afterlife of the Twin Towers. Globalization, Violence, and the Visual Culture of Cities offers fresh insight into the problems and potential of cities around the world, including Beijing, Berlin, London, New York, Paris, and São Paulo. With specially-commissioned essays from the fields of cultural theory, architecture, film, photography, and urban geography, this innovative volume will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and researchers across the humanities and social sciences.