Reconstructing Historical Memories

This book focuses on Reconstructing Historical Memories of critical historical occurrences that have had a dramatic impact upon the development of human history. While the essays in this book analyze a range of circumstances that foreground issues of memory, history and narrative, this book offers primary approaches to understanding the reconstruction of historical memories. Moving across geographical borders and political boundaries, this book seeks to link the past with the present as this linkage is essential for a good understanding of the condition of being human. It also highlights that reconstructing historical memory, which redefines the past and national identity, significantly affects the interpretation of the present and the perspective about future.

Reconstructing Historical Memories increases public consciousness in changing the narratives around what reconstruction of historical memories means and what we can learn from it. There is much in the book that has never been explored in books of this ilk. As such this book offers a wide range of arguments and approaches and provides a powerful case for the importance of reconstruction of historical memories. It is a. thought-provoking book that should be read by scholars and the public who are interested in understanding the politics of reconstructing historical memories.

The idea of Reconstructing Historical Memories which has been in the making for the last have years was conceived during our long hours of conversation over the importance of history and memory. Both editors, a historian and a littérateur respectively, have always been dealing with history and memory in the fields of history and literature. Plus, being avid readers of memoirs and historical movie enthusiasts, both of us have always had enough materials to converse with regards to historical events and how they are represented and interpreted.

During these conversations, we were inundated with questions that each of us has raised for one another. Questions such as what are the relationships between history and memory? what are their relationships with narratives (visual or textual)? how are they constructed, interpreted, conveyed and transmuted? but above all how are they reinterpreted and reconstructed? what significance does the study of history and memory have for the reconstruction of the past and the construction of our identities? how and what do people remember historical events? why do people have different or sometimes conflicting memories of the same event? how did events and their consequences impact personal individual or collective lives? formed the backdrop of our discussions and later became the key questions that the essays in this volume seek to answer.

What both of us realized in our conversations over this topic is that there are varying points of view about historical events. Therefore, the existing historical interpretations are provisional which brings up the need to revisit and revise the past, and reconstruct the historical memories.

Reconstructing Historical Memories carries with it a similar undertone and intention. Scholarship on the theme of ‘memory and history’ has been booming and the need to investigate how historical memories should be reconstructed is all-time high. This collection offers key approaches to understanding the reconstruction of historical memories. The essays in this collection analyze a range of circumstances that foreground issues of memory, history, and narrative (visual or textual) in the reconstruction of historical memories. Reconstructing Historical Memories should not be taken as mere reproductions of what really occurred.

Rather, it is a phenomenon that has a potent and momentous effect on the interpretation of the present as well as the perspective about the future. Reconstructing historical memory is the key to locating one’s identity and seeing the self in the stream of time. Thus, the knowledge of reconstructing historical memories is the prerequisite of socio-political and cultural intelligence which is essential to the peoples of a society. This makes this collection an important book for scholars and specialists in history and its subfields including political history, cultural history, social history and military history.

Reconstructing Historical Memories can also be adopted for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on history from which it is expected that students gain historical perspective and comprehension for reconstructing historical memories. The ultimate goal of this collection is to facilitate a more critical and reflective perspective of historical accounts which leads to the reconstruction of historical memories.