In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old.

Takes on an innovative focus on "spectacular memory," asking how spectacle functions in processes of memory, countermemory, and silencing. Breaks new ground in the discussion of absence, both in terms of the ‘absent,’ missing dialogues, texts, monuments and communities, as well as the "disappearing" older modes of living being phased out, outdated technologies, and dissolved nations. Covers a wide range of historical memory topics, including social memories of communism in Eastern Europe, U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in World War II, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. These articles show the emergence of counter memories, new technologies, and new means of memory community formation that offer possibilities for the future.