Description: In Disturbing Remains, ten scholars focus on the remembrance and representation of traumatic historical events in the twentieth century.

The volume opens with essays by David William Cohen, Veena Das, and Philip Gourevitch. Their reflections on the narratives framing Robert Ouko's death in Kenya, Sikh-Hindu violence in India around the time of Indira Gandhi's assassination, and the 1994 genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda offer fresh insights into the genesis and aftermath of these tragedies. The next four essays explore the expression of societal disaster in works of art and ritual. Lenin's image, Pablo Picasso's Guernica, balsa figurines of whites made by the Kuna of Panama, and Chinese fertility statuettes after Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward are the subjects considered by Leah Dickerman, Carlo Ginzburg, Carlo Severi, and Jun Jing. Disturbing Remains closes with three essays about the influence of the dead on the construction of shared identity. Istvan Rev looks at how Hungarians have dealt with the 1956 revolution and its executed leader, and Jorn Rusen and Saul Friedlander contemplate the public memory of the Holocaust in Germany and worldwide.

These essays not only broaden the debate about the interplay of official history with private recollection but also deepen our understanding of the resources and limitations of collective memory.

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