Travels in Time

Abstract Travels in Time is a collection of essays on collective memory. It is grounded in literary, cultural, and media memory studies. Human beings are time travelers. Incessantly, they traverse past, present, and future. This process is called collective memory. Collective memory helps people remember their childhood, know who they are, anticipate danger, commemorate the dead, and hand on knowledge. It is the key to identity and culture. Travels in time are not just mental phenomena, but also sociocultural and medial ones. This collection of essays undertakes forays into various dimensions of collective memory. It discusses in what ways families and generations are shaped by the past; how media such as literature, film, and photography make and remake collective memory; and the cultural dimensions of trauma, flashbulb memories, and implicit memory. A central question concerns collective memory in motion: People travel in time with collective memory; but memory, too, is a traveler. What happens, when versions of the past move across cultural and national boundaries, or over long stretches of time? The cases of traveling memory discussed in this book include memories of colonial warfare in India and Britain; the transnational reach of apartheid memories; transgenerational memories of migration; European memories in film; mediations and remediations of the First World War, the Holocaust, and 9/11; collective memory and the coronavirus pandemic; the Odyssey as a longue durée mnemohistory; and James Joyce’s Ulysses as a critical reflection of such long-term memories.