Confronting the Past
Learn how countries address their darkest chapters
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The uproar over Civil War monuments and how history is taught in schools is by no means limited to the United States. Across the globe bitter memories of the past continue to divide and enrage. Realms of Memory is a podcast series which explores how countries confront the past, the benefits they gain by doing do, and the dangers that arise when they fail to take up this challenge.
Episode 34: Splintered Memories of the Great Depression and the New Deal
During the Great Depression the capitalist system in the United States neared the point of collapse. The stock market plunged to its lowest point in the century, the banking system was at risk of failing, and unemployment peaked at a quarter of the workforce. ...
Episode 33: Memory Politics in Ukraine
Historian Georgiy Kasianov has authored, co-authored, and co-edited over twenty books on his native country of Ukraine. I had the opportunity to speak with him in February 2024 about his book Memory Crash: The Politics of History in and around Ukraine 1980s-2010s. Georgiy’s interest...
Episode 32: MAGA and the National Memory Divide
How can we work toward a greater degree of freedom and justice for all if our memories of the past are fundamentally different? How can we pursue the general welfare and wellbeing of the people without common reference points? This is the dilemma raised...
Episode 31: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement
Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. the 1960s civil rights movement achieved far reaching legal and political changes. University of Southern California sociologist Hajar Yazdiha points out that not surprisingly a myriad of other disenfranchised and marginalized groups looked to the example...
Episode 30: Confederate Monuments and the Fight for Racial Justice
Despite the removal of scores of prominent monuments to the Confederacy the vast majority remain firmly in place. For communities to make informed decisions about the future of these monuments they need to have a clear understanding of their past. It was with this...
Episode 29: Mexican Americans and the Memory of the US-Mexico War
With the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the US-Mexico War, Mexican Americans became the first non-white population to become US citizens. University of Texas at San Antonio historian Omar Valerio-Jiménez reminds us that most Mexican American never enjoyed full citizenship rights. In...
Show Host
Rick Derderian is the grandson of a survivor of the Armenian genocide–an unresolved past which continues to haunt modern day Turkey. He holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of North Africans in Contemporary France: Becoming Visible and has published numerous articles on immigration and memory in France.
