This collection of essays investigates such diverse vehicles for war commemoration as poems, battlefield tours, souvenirs, books, films, architectural structures, comics, websites, and video games. Drawing on essayists from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Israel and the United States, this work explores the evolution from traditional to contemporary forms of war commemoration while addressing the fundamental question of whether these new forms of memorial are meant to encourage the remembering or the forgetting of the experience of war, as well as what implications the process of commemoration may have for the continuation of the modern nation state.
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Michael Keren is a professor of communications and Canada Research Chair in communication, culture and civil society at the University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). He is the author or editor of numerous books on such topics as the media, politics and freedom of the press. A native of Hamburg, Germany, Holger H. Herwig is a professor of history and Canada Research Chair in military and strategic studies at the University of Calgary). He has written extensively about German military-diplomatic relations in the 20th century, and has taken part in several History Channel and Discovery Channel productions.

Table of Contents


Introduction

Michael Keren     


PART I: THE POPULARIZATION OF WAR MEMORY: REMEMBERING OR FORGETTING?

Commemorating Jewish Martyrdom

Michael Keren     

The Ninetieth Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme

Dan Todman     

Popular Memory in Northern Ireland

Rebecca Lynn Graff-McRae     

Manufacturing Memory at Gallipoli

Bruce C. Scates     

Commemoration and Consumption in Normandy, 1945-1994

Sam Edwards     

Nuclear War and Popular Culture

Arthur G. Neal     


PART II: THE MEDIA OF WAR MEMORY: EROSION OF HEGEMONY?

The Cult of Heroic Death in Nazi Architecture

Holger H. Herwig     

The Superhero Comic Book as War Memorial

Bart Beaty     

The BBC's "People's War" Website

Lucy Noakes     

Inscribing Narratives of Occupation in Israeli Popular Memory

Tamar Katriel     

The Operation Victory Video Game

Janis L. Goldie     

The Rwandan Genocide in Film

Kirsten McAllister     


About the Contributors     

Index