Hail the Conquering Hero: Remembering the Troops in The Hurt Locker,Inglourious Basterds and Avatar

Three recent movies about war are examined. All have been honored by critics and welcomed by audiences. The three movies are very different from one another. They reflect different ways of thinking and feeling about war. More specifically, they represent ways we relate to the troops we send into battle and our concerns about whether we have done and are doing the right things.     

Remembering Nanking: historical reconstructions and literary memorializations of the Nanking Massacre

The Nanking Massacre is a historical event that invokes many contestations and tensions, as the recollection of what took place in Nanking during the six weeks from December 1937 to February 1938 is always under the influence of political circumstances and ideologies. This article explores the contemporary historical narratives and fictional representations of the Nanking Massacre to see how it has been remembered. The article mainly addresses North American academic debates over the Nanking massacre, and analyzes three novels by immigrant Chinese American authors, Qi Shouhua’s When the Purple Mountain Burns, Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem, and Yan Geling’s The Flowers of War.     

Martyrdom and Crusading in the Thirteenth Century: Remembering the Dead of Louis IX's Crusades

Death and remembrance of the dead were of great significance to Christians in the Middle Ages, and those men and women who were believed to have died as martyrs for the faith were worthy of particular renown. In the context of the crusades, during which thousands of Christian participants placed their lives at risk, the possibility that those who died were martyrs was therefore inevitably raised. Belief relating to the martyrdom of crusaders has interested historians for some time. Thus far, though, attention has largely been focused on the earliest stages of the crusade movement and the first crusade in particular. These studies suggest that after this time a popular belief that crusaders could be, and often were, martyrs was firmly established. This paper is intended to extend this debate, which has largely ignored how ideas relating to Christian martyrdom developed beyond the initial stages of the crusade movement. For, while the possibility that crusaders might achieve martyrdom is consistently present in our source material for later crusades, this does not necessarily mean that the issue had become uncontroversial. This subject will be tackled through an examination of material relating to the campaigns of the French king Louis IX (d. 1270) in North Africa and the Levant during the mid- and later-thirteenth century. The first part of the paper is intended to illustrate some of the inconsistencies present in approaches to the subject of the martyrdom of crusaders in this period. The second part will focus on a specific text, the Vie de saint Louis of John of Joinville (d. 1317), in order to show that the lack of clarity which characterises the wider picture concerning martyrdom and crusading should not deter us from trying to explore and explain the attitudes of individuals.