The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials

From the commemoration of September 11to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, recentdecades have witnessed a substantialincrease in the number of new publicmemorials built in both Europe and theUnited States. This volume considers thecontemporary explosion of publiccommemoration in terms of changedcultural and social practices of mourning,memory, and public feeling. Positingmemorials as the physical and visualembodiment of our affective responses toloss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles,balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragicdeath in order to better comprehendhow grief is mediated in contemporarycommemorative cultures.