How Do We Remember? The Politics and Cultures of Memory

Catalog description

What is the relationship between an individual person and collective memories? How do societies "remember"? Under the format of a discussion-based seminar, this course proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between memory and history. It explores various ways in which societies have mobilized their remembrances of the past for political and economic ends in the present; how -and whose -memory began to matter in a global 20th century; and how individual testimonies have highlighted the role of body, experience, trauma, and nostalgia for writing new, more inclusive and heterogeneous histories. In the first part of the course, we will read excerpts from works by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists about cultural and collective memory. In the second part of the course, we will analyze how the politics of memory intermesh at a local and global scale, via a set of case studies that focus on: the memory of the Shoah (the Holocaust) in post-1945 Western and Central Europe; political violence, civil war, and reconciliation in post-1990 Guatemala; and the role of remembrance and testimony for claims of moral retribution in the aftermaths of colonialism (the Mau Mau revolt in colonial Kenya and the long-term efforts of the British government to conceal their violent repression of the anticolonial struggles). This class will follow the format of a seminar. The professor will give short lectures each week in order to introduce the readings and place them within larger debates, but the course will mainly be discussion-oriented. This course meets the Dietrich Gen Ed "Contextual Thinking" requirement.