This volume represents, explores and interrogates the current developments in the study of memory, engaging directly with the place of memory in culture, and with memory's meaning/s and history.

What did it mean to be mad in seventeenth-century England? This book uses vivid autobiographical accounts of mental disorder to explore the ways madness was identified and experienced from the inside, asking how certain people came to be defined as insane, and what we can learn from the accounts they wrote.

Memory Cultures is an interdisciplinary collection that takes a journey through memory in order to contextualize this current "memory boom." International contributors focus on memories "outside" -in the many fields within which understandings of memory have been produced. The collection focuses less on memory as an object whose inner workings are to be studied, and more on memory as a concept, tracing genealogies of our contemporary Western understandings of memory through studies of the early modern arts of memory. The book also discusses nineteenth-century evolutionary museums, and the...

In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the humanities and social sciences have put into question their own claims to objectivity, authority, and universality, memory has appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as inevitably partial, subjective, and local. At the same time, memory and memorial practices have become sites of contestation, and the politics of memory are increasingly prominent. This interdisciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of perspectives, the complex cultural work...

Dreams have been significant in many different cultures, carrying messages about this world and others, posing problems about knowledge, truth, and what it means to be human. This thought-provoking collection of essays explores dreams and visions in early modern Europe, canvassing the place of the dream and dream-theory in texts and in social movements. In topics ranging from the dreams of animals to the visions of Elizabeth I, and from prophetic dreams to ghosts in political writing, this book asks what meanings early modern people found in dreams.

This inter-disciplinary volume demonstrates, from a range of perspectives, the complex cultural work and struggles over meaning that lie at the heart of what we call memory. In the last decade, a focus on memory in the human sciences has encouraged new approaches to the study of the past. As the humanities and social sciences have put into question their own claims to objectivity, authority and universality, memory has appeared to offer a way of engaging with knowledge of the past as inevitably partial, subjective and local. At the same time, memory and memorial practices have become sites of...