Time

Although time is technically measured by carbon dating, clocks, and calendars, it is the intersubjective time of experience that preoccupies the disciplines of history and memory studies. The emergence of memory studies occurred with changing perceptions of time related to the loss of tradition, controversy over monuments and museums venerating violent pasts, activists demanding recognition of stories that have been silenced, transformations in mass media, and growing awareness that the future is threatened by nuclear war and climate change. The entry presents four waves of memory studies and their corresponding perceptions of time: (1) collective memory, (2) memory boom, (3) transcultural memory, and (4) the Anthropocene. While the first three concentrate on human understandings of the past and present, the fourth places human-centered time within the context of the Anthropocene, planetary time, and a threatened future. The entry concludes by outlining two research areas: one dedicated to the interplay of narrative, time, and memory and the other to modernity and the crisis of time.