"Calling Memory into Place is written out of a deep conviction in the emancipatory and reparative potentials of memory. Building on the trauma and the resilience inherited from her mother’s survival of the Holocaust, Dora Apel powerfully explores how memorials, visual artworks, and personal narratives of illness and recovery can mobilize us in the struggle for social justice."

Marianne Hirsch, co-author of School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference

"In this deeply personal and thoughtful book, Dora Apel explores what it means to recall terrible events and what is at stake in forgetting them. She shows us that artworks, memorials and monuments, however fixed they may be in their form, are also malleable in their meaning when they are mobilized by individuals, communities and governments. Whether she is writing about recent attempts to reckon with America’s legacy of racial violence, the dilemmas that arise from efforts to memorialize the Holocaust, or her own struggle with cancer, Apel’s approach is always lucid, empathic and moving."

Coco Fusco, Cooper Union School of Arts

"An inherently fascinating, thoughtful and thought-provoking series of insightfully informative essays on the role of memory in processing personal, social, cultural and political histories, Calling Memory into Place is an impressive and original work that is nicely illustrated throughout in full color." 

Midwest Book Review

"The Best Books of 2020: Non-Fiction"

PopMatters, The Best Books of 2020: Nonfiction

"Apel brings it all to bear in this extraordinary book."

PopMatters

«The Library Café interview with Dora Apel»

The Library Cafe