Confronting the Past

Learn how countries address their darkest chapters

Subscribe

Our Episodes

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 26: Lynching, Black Culture and Memory

Beginning in 1880s Africans Americans became the targets of a lynching craze that claimed thousands of lives.  In Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lyching on Black Culture and Memory, University of Oklahoma historian Karlos K. Hill argues that narratives are key to understanding...

Read More

Episode 25: Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia

Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era.  How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts...

Read More

Episode 24: Remembering the System: Enforced Prostitution by the Japanese Military in Indonesia

The system of enforced prostitution by the Japanese military went unpunished and unexamined for decades after the Asia-Pacific War.  International recognition only began in 1991 when Korean survivor Kim Hak-sun spoke out in graphic detail about her dark past.  In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory,...

Read More

Episode 23: Culture, Urban Development and the Memory of the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea

In May 1980 the city of Gwangju in South Korea erupted in violence.  Shocked by the brutal suppression of student protests against the threat of renewed dictatorship, the citizens of Gwangju, South Korea’s six largest city, seized weapons, formed their own army, and liberated...

Read More

Episode 22: Bolsonaro and the Memory of Dictatorship in Brazil

In 1964 the military seized power in Brazil, overthrowing the democratically elected government of João Goulart.  The military ruled Brazil for the next 21 years relying on increasingly repressive measures to retain its grip on power.  The most infamous decree, Institutional Act Number 5,...

Read More

Episode 21: Memory Activism in Serbia: Remembering the Wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia

The wars that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia stretched across the 1990s unleashing a level of destruction and human devastation not seen in Europe since World War II.  The repercussions of the conflict were profound and can still be felt today.  Over 130,000...

Read More

Show Host

JPEG image

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.

Rick Derderian

Latest From Instagram

Follow updates and new stories on our Instagram channel.