Critical Inquiry Critical Inquiry
Alison Landsberg is associate professor of History/Art History and Cultural Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Her first book, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (2004) considers the ways in which individuals are increasingly able to take on memories of events they did not live through and explores the potential of such memories to produce empathy and to become the grounds for progressive politics. Her recent book, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (2015), explores the ways in which popular representations of the past, even as they engage their viewers affectively, might foster historical thinking, forcing a reconsideration of what constitutes history, and of how history works, in the contemporary mediated public sphere. She is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters.
