Table of Contents

Preface Introduction Marianne Hirsch and Nancy K. Miller 1 Tangled Roots and New Genealogies 1. The Factness of Diaspora: The Social Sources of Genetic Genealogy Alondra Nelson 2. Jews-Lost and Found: Genetic History and the Evidentiary Terrain of Recognition Nadia Abu El-Haj 3. The Web and The Reunion: http://czernowitz.ehpes.com Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer 4. Queering Roots, Queering Diaspora Jarrod Hayes 5. Indigenous Australian Arts of Return: Mediating Perverse Archives Rosanne Kennedy 2 Genres of Return 6. Memoirs of Return Saidiya Hartman, Eva Hoffman, Daniel Mendelsohn in Conversation with Nancy K. Miller 7. Return to Half-Ruins: Fathers and Daughters, Memory and History in Palestine Lila Abu-Lughod 8. Singing with the Taxi Driver: From Bollywood to Babylon Jay Prosser 9. Off-Modern Homecoming in Art and Theory Svetlana Boym 10. Return to Nicaragua: The Aftermath of Hope Susan Meiselas 3 Rights of Return 11. Between Two Returns Amira Hass 12. Adoption and Return: Transnational Genealogies, Maternal Legacies Margaret Homans 13. Foreign Correspondence Sonali Thakkar 14. "O Give Me a Home" Patricia J. Williams, with Images by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick 15. The Politics of Return: When Rights Become Rites Elazar Barkan 4 Sites of Return and the New Tourism of Witness 16. Sites of Conscience: Lighting Up Dark Tourism Liz Sev?enko 17. Kishinev Redux: Pogrom, Purim, Patrimony Nancy K. Miller 18. Trauma as Durational Performance: A Return to Dark Sites Diana Taylor 19. Pilgrimages, Reenactment, and Souvenirs: Modes of Memory Tourism Marita Sturken Contributors Index

Promotional Information

A stellar cast of scholars, writers, engaged journalists, and public intellectuals explore some of the most pressing issues of our time. Writing (and speaking) in voices urgent and intimate, public and political, these contributors transport readers across generations and national borders to ask what it means to belong to a place or a people in an age of overlapping claims and occupied territories. -- Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization What most distinguishes this accomplished and thought-provoking volume is its textured conceptual approach and resistance to facile formulations of identity, identification, loss, and return. The essays individually and cumulatively wrestle with a complex, shifting set of competing claims and elusive legacies. However we define 'home' and 'origins', this collection reminds us that there is no overarching narrative that will satisfy all historical and political desires for recognition and recovery, and the experiences that shape us personally and familially have global implications. -- Bella Brodzki, Sarah Lawrence College

About the Author

Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University. Her most recent books are Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, written with Leo Spitzer, and The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her most recent books are But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives and the family memoir, What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past.

Reviews

This broad-ranging collection brings into focus a set of approaches--techno-scientific, personal, and global-that add to the ever-compelling topics of identity, rootedness, mobility, and return. With its fascinating new perspectives, this book demonstrates the importance of memory studies for a better understanding of the future. -- Francoise Lionnet, University of California, Los Angeles