You can't hold a memory or put it under a microscope, but without our memories, we lose our identities. No wonder memory is such a political battleground. York English professor Julia Creet, one of the leading international scholars in the field of Cultural Memory Studies, discusses the political implications of memory, and the ideological factors that have turned genealogy into a booming industry.

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Julia Creet's forthcoming book "The Geological Sublime" traces the culture, historical, and corporate histories of the world's most profitable genealogy databases. Preorder here: https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/genealogical-sublime