From JEMMS 2/2011: Educating Educators of Memory: Reflections on an InSite Teaching Programme

Abstract

This article reports on a continuing professional development programme run by the Imperial War Museum in London for educators involved in teaching about European memories. On the basis of two sites visited in Hungary which were elements of the educational programme, the memorial Shoes on the Danube Promenade and the Memento Statue Park, this article suggests that Alison Landsberg's concept of prosthetic memory can be applied to these sculptural monuments. It explores the political potential of empathy in transmitting diverse European pasts and of mapping individual, performative, responses to less familiar cultural contexts.