Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place

Sites of violence often provoke conflicts over memorialization, and those conflicts provide insight into the construction and use of memory as a means of achieving public recognition of past wrongs. In "Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place", scholars of religious studies, sociology, history, political science, Africana studies, and Jewish studies examine the religious memorialization of violent acts that are linked to particular sites. Supported by the essays gathered here, the editors argue that memory is essential to religion and, conversely, that religion is inherent in memory. Other books have considered memory and violence, or religion and place - this collection is the first to discuss the intersection of all four. Oren Baruch Stier is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University. He is author of "Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust" (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). J. Shawn Landres is a research fellow at the Sigi Ziering Institute, located at the University of Judaism.
He is co-editor of "After the Passion is Gone: American Religious Consequences" (AltaMira Press, 2004), and "Personal Knowledge and Beyond: Reshaping the Ethnography of Religion" (New York University Press, 2002).