Episode 39: Remembering Europe’s Dictators
From Spain to the Baltic States Europe is littered with sites connected to the personal lives of former dictators. Birthplaces, childhood homes, summer and winter residences, mausoleums and tombs...
Episode 38: Memory, Storytelling and the National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association, known simply as the NRA, is commonly regarded as one of the most powerful lobbies in the United States. If much needed gun reform never...
Episode 37: American Memory in the Post-9/11 Era
The greatest democracy in history, a beacon of freedom, a selfless force of good in the world, these are all elements of American exceptionalism. These are the ways Americans...
Episode 36: Transformative Memory and the Mississippi Burning Murders
In June 2004 a thirty-member multiracial task force known as the Philadelphia Coalition stood on the stage of the Neshoba County Coliseum before a crowd of a thousand people. ...
Episode 35: Death Strip to Green Belt: Memory and Conservation in Germany
How can a wounded land become a source of healing, rejuvenation and renewal? How can a former death strip become a lifeline connecting a painful past to the promise...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Episode 28: Memorials and Public Feeling in America
Americans are living in an age of frenzied memorial making, argues University of Texas at Dallas art and cultural historian Erika Doss. We saturate the public landscape with memorials...
