Contemporary scholars agree that the revival of cultural memory concerning the horrors of the twentieth century in the Argentine memory began with kirchnerismo. The ongoing academic discussion about Argentina’s more recent past, however, has largely ignored the way that the past traumas of the country have influenced the revival of collective cultural memory. This dissertation examines two novels and two films from twenty-first century Argentina. Each pair of novels and films offers a version of history while also offering a reflection on the results of memory, years after the events remembered occurred. The primary academic contribution of the study is to demonstrate how the two novels and two films shape cultural memory and in turn create a new Argentine cultural memory in which the memory of pain caused by social trauma has created a secondary memory. Chapter one focuses on the theories of cultural memory and trauma and how they relate to the Argentine experience. It examines two manifestations of secondary memory: postmemory and prosthetic memory because, instead of future generations having a postmemory that is born into the history of the past trauma, most Argentines share a prosthetic memory. Amy Kaminsky defines post memory as the memory that develops from silence as a way of understanding trauma of the past and generally emerges in subsequent generations that have a tie to the trauma but did not experience it themselves. For Kaminsky, prosthetic memory develops through the products of post memory, such as in art, music, literature, or film, and is generally seen in outsiders, that is, those that are not directly connected with the traumatic event. In the Argentine case, those that were alive during the trauma itself, present the effects of postmemory, because the initial memory was wiped clean through government intervention and societal cleansing of the past. The advent of holocaust studies initially linked theories of cultural memory and trauma. Even though the Argentine case of trauma and the cultural memory shares some points of contact with the holocaust, the theorization of trauma in the Argentine case differs due to the wiping clean of collective memory primarily through quick trials and later silencing. The dissertation is a contribution to the field of cultural memory studies because it illuminates how the altered process of collective memories in Argentina produced a uniquely defined prosthetic memory in novels and films in subsequent generations. Chapter two analyzes secondary memory and is divided into two sections, each discussing a specific novel. The first section discusses The Promised Hell: A Prostitute of the Zwi Migdal (El infierno prometido: una prostitute de la Zwi Migdal) (2006) by Elsa Drucaroff. In The Promised Hell (El infierno prometido), Drucaroff presents a version of the white slave trade in Argentina. Her version of events serves to bring together her Argentine audience and helps it to recall traumatic events and thus overcome that trauma. She also uses commonly-known Judeo-Christian religious stories to make her reader sympathetic with a personal narrative. The second section discusses On a Same Night (Una misma noche) (2012) by Leopoldo Brizuela. Brizuela presents the way in which events in the present can remind the reader of similar circumstances in the past and thus generate an obsession with those previous events. This obsession then leads to a search for meaning in those events and in turn a way to overcome their trauma. Chapter three focuses on how cultural memory and trauma are addressed in Argentine film. This chapter is also divided into two sections. The first section discusses Chronicle of an Escape (Crónica de una fuga) (2006) directed by Adrián Caetano. Caetano’s presentation of a detainee during the Process of National Reorganization (Proceso), also called the Dirty War (1976-83), plays on Bazin’s idea of film as “social documentary” in that it presents a representation of what society desires to see about past trauma. The second section discusses A Less Bad World (Un mundo menos peor) (2004) directed by Alejandro Agresti. This film presents the ways in which the traumatic past is rediscovered in the present through the technique of using a small Argentine coastal town as setting. Agresti presents different social groups and a regional perspective to represent Argentina in coping with the past.