Connecting Histories [Hardcover]

First published in 2006.  The dynamics of ethnicity, diaspora, identity and community are the defining features of contemporary life, giving rise to important and exciting new interdisciplinary fields of study and literature on subjects that were previously seen as the exclusive domain of the social sciences. Connecting Histories is an important contribution to this trend. While using sociological and anthropological theories, its is an innovative historical and comparative assessment of ethnic identities and memories. Romain focuses on Afro-Caribbean and Jewish individuals and groups, investigating the ways in which 'communities' remember their experiences.Chapter 1 An Introduction to Historical and Ethnic Memory in Life History; Part 1 Paradoxes of Migration; Chapter 2 Myths, Silence and Autobiographical Contexts; Chapter 3 The Self-Knowing Autobiographical Voice, Meta-Memory and the Deconstruction of Myths; Part 2 By the Waters of Babylon; Chapter 4 Theorisations of the Diaspora; Chapter 5 Memories of Dwelling and Migration; Part 3 Hidden Histories, Collective Memory, Remembering and Forgetting in Black and Jewish Ethnic Memory; Chapter 6 Re-remembering and Forgetting Histories; Chapter 7 Mythology and History; Chapter 8 Conclusion;Gemma Romain works at The National Archives, Kew on a Heritage Lottery Fund project called Your Caribbean Heritage, cataloguing and researching colonial office original correspondence from the British Caribbean. She co-edited with David Cesarani, Jews and Ports Cities, 15901990: Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism (Vallentine Mitchell, 2006). Previously, she carried out her Ph.D. at the Parkes Institute, University of Southampton, where she compared and analysed ethnic memories and histories of African-Caribbean and Jewish communities in modern Britain. She was also a researcher and writer for the Connections: Hidden British Histories project, a historical exhibition exploring Asian, Caribbean, and Jewish historl“˜