War Memory and Popular Culture

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. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

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.

Edited by Michael Keren and Holger H. Herwig
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 212
Bibliographic Info: notes, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4141-9
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5277-4
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction
Michael Keren      1

PART I: THE POPULARIZATION OF WAR MEMORY: REMEMBERING OR FORGETTING?
Commemorating Jewish Martyrdom
Michael Keren      9
The Ninetieth Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme
Dan Todman      22
Popular Memory in Northern Ireland
Rebecca Lynn Graff-McRae      41
Manufacturing Memory at Gallipoli
Bruce C. Scates      57
Commemoration and Consumption in Normandy, 1945–1994
Sam Edwards      76
Nuclear War and Popular Culture
Arthur G. Neal      92

PART II: THE MEDIA OF WAR MEMORY: EROSION OF HEGEMONY?
The Cult of Heroic Death in Nazi Architecture
Holger H. Herwig      105
The Superhero Comic Book as War Memorial
Bart Beaty      120
The BBC’s “People’s War” Website
Lucy Noakes      135
Inscribing Narratives of Occupation in Israeli Popular Memory
Tamar Katriel      150
The Operation Victory Video Game
Janis L. Goldie      166
The Rwandan Genocide in Film
Kirsten McAllister      185

About the Contributors      201
Index      203

• “Useful contributions…worthwhile”—Canadian Journal of History