Recognizing the growing discipline of Memory Studies and recent theoretical approaches to memory, this group pursues, and is grounded in, a literary-historical approach to cultural memory studies. As such, one interest of the group is how this particular approach can inform or enlighten our investigations.
The research questions raised by the group’s investigations into the relationship between cultural memory, rhetoric, and literary discourse include:
- How is cultural memory shaped by literary discourse?
- How can, and how does, rhetorical analysis inform our understanding of the construction of cultural memory?
- In what way can assumed author’s strategies (argumentation, framing) within cultural memory be analyzed and mapped?
- What is the relationship between constructions (literary, rhetorical) of time and cultural memory?
- How does nostalgia inform cultural memory, and how reliant are rhetoric and literary discourse on nostalgia to craft cultural memory?
By asking these questions, we hope to attend further to how byproducts of cultural memory—historiography, nation-building, political discourses—are interconnected with language and literature.