In recent years, nostalgia for empires of the past has reshaped political cultures, identities, and historical discourses across the globe. REVENANT—Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation (Grant # 101002908) interrogates the collective memories and legacies of three former empires: the Habsburgs, the Ottomans and the Romanovs. REVENANT examines the personifications, emplacements, and objectifications of these bygone empires: the ways in which specific persons, places, and things convey legacies and orient memories about them. The research for REVENANT spans both geographic and disciplinary divides. In order to pioneer a comprehensive, comparative analysis of postimperial memories and legacies, the members of REVENANT pursue research in a host of countries, including Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and the United States. Memories and legacies of the Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Romanovs take shape quite differently in each of these successor states, and beyond—consequently, the distinct contexts of REVENANT’s research cast contrasting analytical light on one another. The multiple disciplines, sensibilities and methods that coordinate our research are central to REVENANT’s overarching aims. REVENANT includes scholars trained in Anthropology, Comparative Literature, History, Musicology, Psychology, and Theology. Two key concepts unite and integrate REVENANT’s individual research projects: postempire and interimperiality. Postempire, a concept that the PI, Jeremy F. Walton, has developed through his research for the project, theorizes the forms of nostalgia and criticism, as well as the uncanny legacies, that define postimperial political, social and cultural life. Interimperiality, adapted from the work of literary scholar Laura Doyle, encapsulates the ways in which collective memories of multiple empires mediate and inflect one another. The interimperial aspect of collective memories of the Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Romanovs is central to REVENANT’s research, and illuminates shared yet unacknowledged forms of historical belonging, interaction, and transformation. More generally, REVENANT’s approach to postimperial, interimperial collective memories and legacies aims to foster new modes of historical understanding that discard the epistemological and political straitjackets of methodological nationalism.
