Past event
Online CIMS Seminar: Astrid Erll, 'Collective Memory Reloaded' Why cognitive psychology and cultural memory studies should meet (and where)
An exciting combination of psychology, sociology, and history was at the very beginning of memory studies — think of Maurice Halbwachs, Aby Warburg, Charles Blondel, or Frederic Bartlett in the 1920s and 1930s. But over the last decades, the multidisciplinary field of memory studies has tended to work in disciplinary silos. Having said that, there has been important work within smaller interdisciplinary clusters, among neighbouring disciplines (such as political philosophy, history, and literary studies). And of course, the last decade has seen an emerging international dialogue in memory studies (not least with the founding of the Memory Studies Association in 2017). But the promise of wide and risky interdisciplinary collaboration around the concept of ‘memory' has yet to be delivered. So, what would happen, for example, if cultural memory studies teamed up with cognitive psychology?
In this public online seminar, Astrid Erll will discuss three research avenues that offer rich areas for collaboration between cultural memory studies and cognitive psychology: (1) ‘the hidden power of implicit collective memory', (2) ‘transnational flashbulb memories', and (3) ‘Covid-19 across memory ecologies'.
Astrid Erll is professor of Anglophone literatures and cultures at Goethe University Frankfurt and founder of the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform (https://www.memorystudies-frankfurt.com ). She is co-editor of the series Media and Cultural Memory (MCM, De Gruyter) and author of Memory in Culture (Palgrave, 2011). Currently, she is writing a book about the Odyssey as an example of transcultural mnemohistory across the longue durée.