Feeling Memory

What did it feel like to be a child in France during World War II? Feeling Memory is an affective exploration of childrens lives in wartime France and the ways they are remembered. Lindsey Dodd draws on the recorded oral narratives of a hundred people to examine the variety of experiences children had during the war. She considers different aspects of remembering, underscoring the centrality of emotion to memory. This book covers a wide range of locationsthe country and the city, Occupied France and the Free Zoneand situationswell-off and poor children, those separated from their families and those with them; it places Jewish childrens experiences alongside non-Jewish childrens. Against the backdrop of momentous events, readers encounter children playing, working, eating, thinking, doing, and feeling. An investigation of the emotions of history, Feeling Memory argues for the transformative potential of affect theory and affective methodologies in oral history and the history of everyday life. This book makes major contributions to the history of France during World War II, understandings of childrens lives in war, and the use of memory in historical and oral history analysis.