CONTENTS

Gold, John Robert.
* Gold, Margaret M. "The Graves of the Gallant Highlanders": Memory, Interpretation and Narratives of Culloden
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Subject Headings:
o Culloden, Battle of, Scotland, 1746.
o Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Motion pictures and the rebellion.
o Battlefields -- Conservation and restoration -- Scotland.
o Interpretation of cultural and natural resources -- Scotland.
o Nostalgia -- Scotland -- History.
Abstract:

The battlefield at Culloden (Scotland), which witnessed the defeat in April 1746 of the forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in a battle against forces loyal to the Hanoverian King George II, remains a site charged with powerful associations. Largely forgotten for a century, the memories of the battle were steadily revived and recast under the influence of romantic Jacobitism, eventually turning the battlefield from undifferentiated moorland into sacred space. This article traces this process and reflects on its lasting implications. After surveying the nature of Jacobitism, especially its transformation from a political to a predominantly romantic movement, it considers film representations of Culloden as a way of unpacking the myths of romantic Jacobitism. The type of reinterpretations found in film, however, have only slowly permeated the narratives presented at the site itself. The conclusion discusses issues arising from the experience of Culloden, making particular reference to the recently announced Memorial Project.

* Bracher, Nathan, 1953- Remembering the French Resistance: Ethics and Poetics of the Epic
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Subject Headings:
o Memorials -- France -- Fort du Mont-Valérien (Suresnes)
o Convert, Pascal, 1957- Mont Valérien, aux noms des fusillés [film]
o World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- France -- Historiography.
o France -- History -- German occupation, 1940-1945 -- Historiography.
o World War, 1939-1945 -- Motion pictures and the war.
o Collective memory -- France.
Abstract:

From its very inception to the present day the French Resistance has been represented and commemorated in the epic mode. While Laurent Douzou's book, La Résistance française: Une histoire périlleuse, reaffirms this heroic vision, Pascal Convert's sculpture honoring executed Resistance fighters on Mont Valérien and his documentary film Mont Valérien, aux noms des fusillés propose a more human, even anti-heroic approach which nevertheless aims to unite a community in memory by celebrating the courage and sacrifice, but also the specific persons, of previously forgotten résistants. The poetics of memory implicit in Convert's works are emblematic of a more general evolution of sensibilities, since contemporary disinterest in the virtues of the warrior and a concomitant preference for recovering the humanity of war's victims can be best understood in reference to the successive trauma of World War I and the Holocaust.

* Moreno Luzón, Javier. Fighting for the National Memory: The Commemoration of the Spanish "War of Independence" in 1908-1912
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Subject Headings:
o Spain -- Anniversaries, etc.
o Peninsular War, 1807-1814 -- Anniversaries, etc.
o Nationalism -- Spain -- History -- 20th century.
o Spain -- Politics and government -- 1886-1931.
Abstract:

Commemorations reveal core characteristics of nationalism and nation-building processes. This article studies Spanish nationalism by examining a series of important commemorative events held from 1908 to 1912 to celebrate the first centennial of the Spanish "War of Independence." Three conclusions are suggested by the analysis: first, that nineteenth-century nationalist myths still held extraordinary sway at the beginning of the twentieth century; second, that most local and regional identities did not run counter to Spanish identity but rather reinforced it; and third, that the national memory constituted a battleground for different political opinions, which used the past to support their own agendas. These conclusions cast doubt on the prevailing arguments concerning the weakness of Spanish nationalism and nation building, while underlining the importance of memory politics in modern nationalist discourses in general.

* Valur Ingimundarson. The Politics of Memory and the Reconstruction of Albanian National Identity in Postwar Kosovo
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Subject Headings:
o Albanians -- Serbia -- Kosovo -- Ethnic identity.
o Nationalism -- Serbia -- Kosovo.
o Collective memory -- Serbia -- Kosovo.
o Nation-building -- Serbia -- Kosovo.
o Kosovo (Serbia) -- Politics and government -- 1980-
Abstract:

The article deals with the reconstruction of Kosovar Albanian political identities in postwar Kosovo, focusing on the tension between two strands of Kosovar Albanian nationalism—one based on a nineteenth-century modernist discourse and the other on supranational identification with "Euro-Atlantic" structures. It analyzes the political power contests over the memory of the struggle against Serbian hegemony as symbolized by the nonviolent legacy of the late President Ibrahim Rugova and by the armed resistance of the Kosovo Liberation Army. It argues that the unwillingness of the "international community" to tackle Kosovo's final status from 1999 to 2005 reinforced Kosovar Albanians' determination, based on memories of repression and war, to achieve statehood and thwarted external attempts to change their self-conception through "forgetting."

* Levi, Neil. "No Sensible Comparison"? The Place of the Holocaust in Australia's History Wars
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Subject Headings:
o Aboriginal Australians -- Government relations -- Historiography.
o Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Influence.
o Genocide -- Historiography.
o Collective memory -- Australia.
Abstract:

In Australia's recent "History Wars" the fate of Australian Aborigines after settlement has frequently been compared and contrasted with that of the Jews during the Holocaust. Such explicit comparisons challenge the widespread critique of transnational Holocaust remembrance as a "screen memory"—a way to avoid acknowledging traumatic local history. These explicit comparisons require a different conceptual vocabulary—terms such as disavowal and partial remembrance can, properly understood, capture more. Those who insist only on the contrasts between colonial settlement and the Holocaust do so to disavow the very idea of an Australian genocide and protect a fragile sense of national identity. But those who do acknowledge genocide overlook its most serious implication: legal responsibility.