What is Memory?

Catalog description

Thanks to the written records that serve as our cultural memory, we know that memory has been a topic of inquiry at least since those records began. Today’s philosophers, psychologists, and literary scholars are continuing to hone the concept of the self as it was understood by John Locke, David Hume, and Sigmund Freud among others—namely, as a dynamic tension between memory and consciousness. These investigators pursue such questions as: How is memory embodied? What is the connection between memory and: the self, language and story-telling, moral and ethical reasoning? What events are best forgotten and how do we go about forgetting them? This course is structured as five units: Autobiographical Memory, Ideas and Metaphors of Memory, The Science of Memory, The Art of Memory, and Collective Memory. Readings represent the full spectrum of western thinking about memory, from Plato’s Theaetetus to works by contemporary neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. It is our hope that this seminar will give students new insights into the workings of their own memories and help them develop a personal practice of memory that will serve their growth as individuals long after their memories of the course itself have dimmed.