Sociocultural trauma experienced by nations isn’t just the result of unimaginable crimes and horrors.  It is the repeated betrayals that make it impossible to mourn, to find meaning in the past, and to move forward.  According to Tony Robben, Utrecht University professor emeritus of...

The duty to remember has become a moral imperative in today’s memory culture.  But reporter and political analyst David Rieff argues that this belief is often misinformed and misplaced.  In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies, Rieff argues that sometimes forgetting is...

Partition cast a shadow over the island of Ireland that stretched across the 20th century.  Less well known, however, is the fallout caused by the division of the Protestant population in Northern Ireland, a region known as Ulster.  Of the 9 historic Ulster counties,...

The Great Patriotic War, shorthand for the war against Nazi Germany, has become the focal point of Russian nationalism under Vladimir Putin.  Memories of the war bolster the legitimacy of Putin’s grip on power while offering Russians a feel good narrative about their national...

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 these sites of dictators can be powerful poles of attraction for extremists, nostalgists, and dark...

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 sees the light of day, the power of the NRA to influence lawmakers and shape...