Recent Scholarship on Memory and History

Little studied by historians before 1980, history and memory have become major foci of inquiry due to the traumatic impact of World War II, the end of the Cold War, and increased globalization. In particular, the denial by some of the Holocaust, the passing away of most World War II survivors, the globalization of communication, economics, and politics, and continued problems of racism and ethnic cleansing have been powerful incentives for historians to study myth, memory, history, national identity, and world history.