Cultural memory theory is a framework which elucidates the relationship between the past and the present. At its most basic level, it explains why, how, and with what results certain pieces of information are remembered. Despite its origins in historiographical scholarship, however, in recent years cultural memory has been applied with increasing frequency to the study of the Classics, most notably in Gowing’s (2005) and Gallia’s (2012) exploration of memory under the Principate as well as the edited volumes by Galinsky (2014), (2016a), and (2016b). As the organisers of the ‘Roman Cultural Memory’ project, we are glad to count ourselves part of this emerging wave. We held three conferences to promote intersections between memory theory and Classics research, the first in November 2016 at King’s College London, the second in June 2017 at the Université Paris-Est Créteil, and the third in March 2018 at the University of São Paulo.

Chapter 7, ‘The MICT and the Archive’, turns to the Residual Mechanism for the International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), the institution that took over the remaining functions of the ICTR after it closed down. This looks at the extent to which the logics that underpinned the ICTR’s archive were replicated at the MICT, specifically through a reading of the materiality of the archive, which sits at the heart of the new MICT complex in Arusha. In doing so, this demonstrates that whilst the rhetoric that surrounded the MICT revived the broad idea of justice that underpinned the ICTR at is inception, the reality was that an even narrower vision of justice came to underpin the archive. This also draws on Pierre Nora’s understanding of Lieux de Memoire to examine the dynamic between remembering and forgetting that is at the heart of the archive.

“Intimacies and Animacies: Queer Ecologies in Asian American Literature” interrogates ideologies that define and govern notions of gender, race, bodies, and nature in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. This chapter explores not only how culturally constructed concepts of filth, decay, and normalcy are mobilized against certain subject positions, but the ways in which these marginalized subjects survive through a radical affiliation and re-orientation to more-than-human natures. Drawing on queer theory’s commitment to destabilizing ideological institutions that structure normative gender and sexual relations, and ecofeminism’s attention to how patriarchal structures overlay the commodification and exploitation of the natural world, this chapter explores the ways these Asian North American authors theorize human-nature relationships in opposition to logics of domination and violence. Suggesting that the fecund, chaotic domicile of Mala Ramchandin in Cereus Blooms at Night offers an articulation of queer space and reading the ingestion of soil, earth, and dust by Comfort Woman’s Kim Soon Hyo as queer incorporation, this chapter examines the oppositional orientations to subjectivity and place that these texts offer.

It is widely acknowledged that Ibsen was one of the most influential foreign authors in China in the twentieth century. His plays were initially introduced by Lu Xun and Hu Shi and then used as a model for the Spoken Drama. In the 1920s, there emerged a group of one-act modern plays composed in vernacular language and featuring heroines following in Nora’s footsteps, later called the ‘departure play’. Cao Yu and Tian Han were among the most prominent Chinese playwrights to consciously learn from Ibsen, especially in the early period of their dramatic careers. Ibsen was also an important source of inspiration for modern Chinese fiction in terms of characterization and theme. In addition, a neologism, ‘Noraism’, was invented to signify the huge impact that Nora once had on the liberation and independence of Chinese women. After the reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Ibsen experienced another revival in China as his plays began to be widely discussed by new generations of scholars and actively adapted into different theatrical genres. Today, Ibsen still plays an important role in the cross-cultural encounters between China, Norway and the rest of the world.