Past (Im)Perfect Continuous: Trans-Cultural Articulations of the Postmemory of WWII

Alice Balestrino

Jun 2021 · Materiali e documenti Book 73 · Sapienza Università Editrice

About this ebook

Past (Im)perfect Continuous. Trans-Cultural Articulations of the Postmemory of WWII presents an international and interdisciplinary approach to the comprehension of the postmemory of WWII, accounting for a number of different intellectual trajectories that investigate WWII and the Holocaust as paradigms for other traumas within a global and multidirectional context. Indeed, by exceeding the geographical boundaries of nations and states and overcoming contextual specificities, postmemory foregrounds continuous, active, connective, transcultural, and always imperfect representations of violence that engage with the alterity of other histories and other subjects. 75 years after the end of WWII, this volume is primarily concerned with the convergence between postmemory and underexamined aspects of the history and aftermath of WWII, as well as with several sociopolitical anxieties and representational preoccupations.

Drawing from different disciplines, the critical and visual works gathered in this volume interrogate the referential power of postmemory, considering its transcultural interplay with various forms, media, frames of reference, conceptual registers, and narrative structures.

About the author

Alice Balestrino holds a Ph.D. in American literature from Sapienza University of Rome and is currently research assistant and program coordinator of IFUSS, International Forum for US Studies, at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. She is the author of essays on Jewish-American Holocaust literature, postmemorial agencies, alternate history, autofiction, post-9/11 fiction, and the narrativization of memory in graphic novels.