What unites much of the most exciting research going on in the field of memory studies today is a tendency to regard memory not as fixed but as fluid, not as static but as dynamic, not as bound but as unbound. Memory is increasingly being studied as something that does not stay put but circulates, migrates, travels; it is more and more being conceptualized as a process, as work that is continually in progress, rather than as a reified object. Memory Unbound is the first book to systematically explore the four most important dimensions of the mobility of memory: its transcultural, transgenerational, transmedial, and transdisciplinary drift. While these dimensions have been treated separately to a greater or lesser extent in a number of publications, this collection considers them comprehensively and in an integrated manner. Bringing together many of the leading scholars of memory with emerging voices in the field, Memory Unbound transforms our current knowledge of the movements of memory across cultures, generations, media, and disciplines and sets an ambitious agenda for the future of memory studies.

Endorsements and reviews:

Memory Unbound is exemplary of the research and writing of the “third wave” of memory studies. It heralds a new departure in keeping with the transforming effects of new technologies of communication, and conveys the energy and excitement attending the precipitous emergence and rapid development of this new realm of scholarship.
Patrick Hutton, University of Vermont

This is a great book – provocative, timely, and thoughtful. It proposes a future for memory research that finds a place for new investigators to embed their ideas.
Joanne Garde-Hansen, University of Warwick

The volume provides a comprehensive examination of the field of memory studies, from a range of disciplines and approaches and using global case studies. The dynamic compilation of essays is attentive to shifts in the field towards interdisciplinarity and provides a nuanced account of the dynamics of memory across various contexts. . . . This volume of essays is a significant contribution to the field as it provides a critical understanding of memory across media and disciplines, and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working in the field of memory studies.
Tanja Bosch, Memory Studies (12.1 (2019): 98-101)

Memory Unbound is an outstanding volume of essays that represents an indispensable reference point for all scholars of memory studies. It brings together the very latest in memory studies scholarship from a diverse range of perspectives that together showcase the ways in which the field can and should traverse borders of various kinds. The twelve essays and introduction that constitute this volume are immaculately edited and well written, and combine theory and practice in exemplary ways.
Sara Jones, Témoigner: Entre histoire et mémoire (126 (Apr. 2018): 156-58)

Contents:

Introduction. Memory on the Move
Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen

Chapter 1. Staging Shared Memory: Je Veux voir and L’Empreinte de l’ange
Max Silverman

Chapter 2. Remembering the Indonesian Killings: The Act of Killing and the Global Memory Imperative
Rosanne Kennedy

Chapter 3.Transnational Memory and the Construction of History through Mass Media
Aleida Assmann

Chapter 4. Small Acts of Repair: The Unclaimed Legacy of the Romanian Holocaust
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer

Chapter 5. Fictions of Generational Memory: Caryl Phillips’s In the Falling Snow and Black British Writing in Times of Mnemonic Transition
Astrid Erll

Chapter 6. The Uses of Facebook for Examining Collective Memory: The Emergence of Nasser Facebook Pages in Egypt
Joyce van de Bildt

Chapter 7. Connective Memory: How Facebook Takes Charge of Your Past
José van Dijck

Chapter 8. Embodiments of Memory: Toward an Existential Approach to the Culture of Connectivity
Amanda Lagerkvist

Chapter 9. Metaphorical Memories of the Medieval Crusades after 9/11
Brian Johnsrud

Chapter 10. The Agency of Memory Objects: Tracing Memories of Soweto at Regina Mundi Church
Frauke Wiegand

Chapter 11. Cultural Memory Studies in the Epoch of the Anthropocene
Richard Crownshaw

Chapter 12. “Filled with Words”: Modeling the September 11 Digital Archive and the Utility of Digital Methods in the Study of Memory
Jessica K. Young

Bibliography
Index