Mapping Memory: Cartography in Contemporary Holocaust Culture

In recent years, new scholarship in cartography has emerged that has begun to
challenge the apparent non-neutrality of maps as representations of physical space.
In the eyes of some, the ‘memory boom’ of the 1980s and 1990s, which was in no small
part occasioned by an exponential increase in works of Holocaust memory, posed a
similar challenge to the authority of traditional historiography. Despite such
developments, there has hitherto been little research that seeks to systematically
connect cartography to memory as a means of representing cultural-memory
phenomena, despite the fact that maps are at times employed in cultural works that
aim to address such questions. As such, this thesis asks how authors and artists
respond to the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary cultural works through the
use of cartography. Particularly, it is concerned with establishing what relation
questions of memory – both cultural and individual – bring to bear on the
cartographies included within the works of Miriam Katin, Amy Kurzweil, Jérémie
Dres, W.G. Sebald, and Nikolaus Gansterer. Accordingly, a theoretical framework
combining scholarship in both cartography and memory studies will be employed.
Broadly, maps within the works of these authors can be conceived of as fluid, flexible
entities that challenge traditional conceptions of cartography as near-objective; this
is in part owing to their connection with the questions of Holocaust memory inherent
to each work – maps tend to mirror mnemonic concerns in accordance with their
fluidity. Consequently, this thesis offers a potential avenue for an increased
understanding of how spaces of the Holocaust are interpreted from a contemporary
(cultural) perspective.