Most cases of intimate partner violence are never made and the stories never told.  Joy Neumeyer did both.  The victim of an abusive relationship while a graduate student at Berkeley, Joy succeeded in having her former boyfriend and fellow graduate student expelled through the Title IX process.  Equality important, she gained recognition for the truth of the physical and emotional harm she suffered.  Through the lens of her training as a historian of the Soviet Union, Joy finds parallels with her own experience with women in both the Soviet and American past.  She explains the history and challenges of the Title IX process which is at once under assault and a vital support for victims of intimate partner violence.  A conversation with Joy Neumeyer, author of A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence and the Stories We Don’t Tell, on this episode of Realms of Memory.  

Weaving together her own survivor story with her doctoral research on the Russian past, Joy Neumeyer offers a personal and historical account of intimate partner violence.  How do we fall victim to abusive relationships?  What makes it so difficult to break free?  Why are these stories so often silenced?  Find out how Joy sought recourse through the Title IX process at the University of California, Berkeley and the rights and protections women have gained since the 1960s.  A conversation with Joy Neumeyer about her book, A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don’ t Tell, next on the October 21st special episode of the Realms of Memory podcast

As the host of the hit true crime podcast, Surviving the Survivor, Joel Waldman spends his days airing commentary on the nation’s most heartbreaking and horrific crime stories.  Yet Joel grew up knowing very little about how his own mother Karmela, or Karm as he affectionately calls her, survived the Holocaust while her father and grandfather were gassed at Auschwitz.  Joel’s book, based on interviews with his mother, Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation about Life (& Death) with My Mom: A Holocaust Survivor, Therapist and My Podcast-Cast Co-Host, is by no means limited to the subject of the Holocaust.  Filled with warmth, love and humor, Joel shares Karm’s thoughts on subjects ranging from marriage to money.  But throughout, the book raises important questions about why we sometimes choose to bury the past and whether this is ever truly possible. 

When do we choose to suppress the past not just as a coping mechanism but to protect our loved ones?  Can refusing to dwell on the past and fixing our sites on the future be understood as a conscious and deliberate choice to reject the label of the victim and to adopt an optimistic outlook on life?  A conversation with Joel Waldman about his book, Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation about Life (& Death) with My Mom: A Holocaust Survivor, Therapist and My Podcast-Cast Co-Host and his hit true crime podcast, Surviving the Survivor: Best Guests in True Crime.  Next on the October 7th episode of Realm of Memory. 

Objects recovered from sites of mass atrocities have a special significance today.  This is because we live in what University College Dublin Professor Lea David labels as a human rights memorialization culture.  Central to this culture is the conviction that we should face difficult histories, we should remember human rights abuses, and victims should be the focus of our memorization efforts.  Objects from sites of mass atrocities are deployed by an array of new memorial museums to pull on the emotional heartstrings of visitors to identify with this new human rights memorialization agenda. In her book, A Victim’s Shoe, a Broken Watch and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights, Lea David explains how shoes are now the most potent example of what she describes as desire objects.  Transcending the confines of the museum, shoes have become powerful memory containers and rallying symbols for diverse movements that often have nothing to do with the human rights memorialization agenda.

A broken wristwatch, battered glasses or a tattered wallet, how can ordinary objects discovered at sites of mass atrocities become powerfully moving?  University College Dublin Professor Lea David calls them desire objects because they take on new and ever changing meanings from their discovery to their use in courtrooms and museums.  The most emotionally charged of all of these objects are shoes.  Now almost mandatory memory pieces for Holocaust museums, shoes have migrated to the wider public sphere helping to mobilize diverse groups around causes ranging from climate change to the war in Gaza.  A conversation with Lea David from University College Dublin about her book, A Victim’s Shoe, a Broken Watch and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights.  Next on the September 2nd episode of Realms of Memory.  

There are limits to our ability to cope with traumatic events.  When we are unable to mourn, process, and come to terms with the past we run the risk of suffering from sociocultural trauma.  This is what Tony Robben argues afflicts the people of Argentina.  Utrecht University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Tony Robben explains how repeated forms of betrayal of trust are the root cause of sociocultural trauma in Argentina.  As a result Argentina is splintered into competing memory communities and ever shifting frameworks for narrating the past.  Explaining the memory rollercoaster in Argentina is the subject of Tony Robben’s book Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning and Accountability. 

The number of disappeared from the years of dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) is still unknown.  What is clear is the lingering trauma.  Anthropologist Tony Robben has spent his career studying the repercussions of this era.  Robben argues that the inability to mourn the dead and the military’s continued refusal to take responsibility for the past has splintered Argentina into competing memory communities. A conversation with Tony Robben about his book, Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning and Accountability, next on the August 5th episode of Realm of Memory.  

Beginning with calls for never again, we’re living in an age where the duty to remember has become sacrosanct.  Memory has become a means of righting past wrongs, fostering trust and strengthening social cohesion.  But is it also possible to see memory as a destabilizing force, undercutting the prospects for peace and stability?  This is precisely what David Rieff argues in his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies.  Informed by a decades-long career as a journalist and writer covering conflict zones around the globe, Rieff contends that forgetting is often the best way to reduce harm and suffering.  Listen to my conversation with David Reiff and find out how forgetting can sometimes be the answer.  

When should we remember difficult and divisive histories?  After a career of covering conflicts around the globe, writer and political analyst David Reiff offers his thoughts on the question. In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies, Rieff posits that in some cases there is a consensus around the need to remember past crimes.  More often, however, there is no agreement.  The only way out of messy conflicts is to agree to forgive and forget.  Find out more about possibilities and perils of memory on the July 1st episode of Realms of Memory.