Giving meaning to death: discourses on war
Books for discussion
Ekstein, Modris, The Rites of Spring. The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, MA, 1989, pb: 2000).
Mosse, George L., Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York, Oxford, 1990).
Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1998).
Core Texts
Ashplant, T.G., Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, ‘The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures and Dynamics’, in Ashplant/Dawson/Roper (eds), Commemorating war: The politics of memory (
Cohen, Aaron J., Oh, ‘That? Myth, Memory, and World War I in the Russian Emigration and the Soviet Union’, Slavic Review, 62 (2003), pp. 69-86.
Prost, Antoine, ‘The Impact of War on French and German Political Cultures’, The Historical Journal 37 (1994), pp. 209-217.
Further Reading
Laqueur, Thomas W. ‘Memory and Naming in the Great War”, in Gillis, John R. (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton NJ, 1994), pp. 150-167.
Lerner, Paul Frederick, Hysterical Men: war, psychiatry, and the politics of trauma in Germany, 1890-1930 (Ithaca, 2003). RC 550 L3
Merridale, Catherine, ‘War, Death, and Remembrance in Soviet Russia’, in Sivan/Winter, War and Remembrance, pp. 61-83.
Mick, Christoph, ‘War and Conflicting Memories – Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lvov 1914-
Stockdale, Melissa K., ‘United in Gratitude: Honoring Soldiers and Defining the Nation in Russia's Great War’, Kritika, 7 (2006), pp. 459-485. JSTOR