Communicating Memory & History

Communicating Memory & History takes as its mission the job of giving communication history its full due in the study of memory. Taking three keywords—communication, history, and memory—representing related, albeit at times hostile, fields of inquiry as its point of departure, this book asks how the interdisciplinary field of memory studies can be productively expanded through the work of communication historians. Across the chapters of this book, contributors employ methods ranging from textual analysis to reception studies to prompt larger questions about how the past can be alternately understood, contested, and circulated.

Communicating Memory & History is ideal for teaching, including case studies that elaborate different ways to approach issues in memory studies. While some foundational knowledge would be useful, it is possible to use the text without extensive knowledge of the literature. This book is of particular interest to professors, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students of communication and media studies, as well as scholars and students in cultural studies, history, and sociology—disciplines where one finds steady consideration of issues related to communication, communication history, and memory.

Nicole Maurantonio received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and serves as Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Communication Studies and American Studies at the University of Richmond. She has previously published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Southern Communication Journal, The Communication Review, and Media History, among other journals.

David W. Park received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and serves as Professor of Communication at Lake Forest College. He has previously published The History of Media and Communication Research (with Jefferson Pooley), The Long History of New Media (with Nicholas W. Jankowski and Steve Jones), Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction to Media and Communication Theory, and The International History of Communication Study (with Peter Simonson).