Why indeed "memory" — some people might ask themselves, wondering about the popularity of the term in current discourse. Why and how would one do research on memory in culture, as a literary scholar, historian, or sociologist? And what can we gain when we add to the existing repertoire of terms for the study of culture — mentalities, identities, ideology, symbols, texts, performance — yet another word in order to examine social formations, historical processes, literature, art, and media from this new perspective of memory?