Narrating Memory, History and Place

Catalog description

This course examines how people imagine places through narrations of the past. It takes as central premises that the past is a contested terrain open to divergent interpretations and that interpretations of the past shape common understandings of places. The meanings bestowed on places dictate who can use them and how. Thus, how people narrate the past matters. It impacts places and thereby the ability of humans to survive and thrive. While this course explores the broad interplay between narrations of memory, history and place, it focuses on the struggles of disempowered communities to narrate history and claim a place of their own. Course readings include literary and other scholarly texts like Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past and Michel De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life as well as writings by Edward Said, William Cronon, Diana Taylor, Steven Hoelscher and Doreen Massey.