Figures and Traces of Memory. Changes in Dynamics of Cultural Memory in Relation to Visual Culture

Thesis Abstract The thesis deals with the visual content of the media of official memory, in particular the visual material of history textbooks and the exhibition of the National Museum. It examines the formal and content features of the representation of four key events of modern Czechoslovak and Czech history which entered the awareness of the general public as "eight" events: the founding of Czechoslovakia (1918), the signing of the Munich Agreement (1938), the communist coup (1948) and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies (1968). Moreover, it relates the modes of representation of these events to the issue of the political transition of 1989. By means of mixed methods research, it examines a sample of textbooks published during the communist era (1967, 1973, 1982, 1983, 1983), the post-communist era (1995, 1996, 1999, 1999, 2000, 2009, 2011) and the exhibits from the permanent exhibition Crossroads of Czech and Czechoslovak Statehood (opened in 2009). In its findings, the thesis presents 34 visual memory figures related to the representation of the selected historical events. It points out the circulation of these images between the medium of the textbook and the historical exposition, thus following the dynamic concept of memory discussed in the theoretical part of the thesis. It finds both..