ABSTRACT
Souvenirs are a commonplace of contemporary life in many parts of the world. Who among us does not have a postcard, a snow globe, or some other keepsake to remind us of our travels? Such souvenirs-literally ‘things to remember’—have fascinated scholars who study contemporary phenomena such as globalization, consumerism, modern tourism industries, museum displays, and postcolonial dynamics (Hitchcock and Teague, 2000; Cave, Jolliffe, and Baum, 2013). At the same time, there has been a tendency to universalize the phenomenon of souvenirs-to suggest, implicitly or explicitly, that souvenirs, no matter where or when they exist, capture a eeting experience and eternalize it as something extraordinary (Gordon, 1986; Swanson and Timothy, 2012). Yet souvenirs, like all objects of material culture, are products of specic cultural and historical contexts, and while similarities might exist between souvenirs from different times and places, we must seek in souvenirs the historical and the particular rather than only the universal.
