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Central European University Department of International Relations
Dark Legacies: Politics of the Past and International Relations
Lecturers: Dr Thomas Fetzer and Dr Alexander Etkind Teaching assistant: Ivan Nikolovski
Europe is now often praised as a model case of how to overcome nationalism and war through inter-state cooperation and cultural tolerance. Yet, at the same time, the struggle to come to terms with the legacies of a ‘dark continent’ (Mark Mazower) has continued to this very day.
This course engages with one of the core questions of this struggle: collective memory. The first part of the course introduces a range of key issues in the study of collective memory such as the relationship between individual and collective memory, as well as the debates about memories’
persistence and change, and the salience of memory politics. In the subsequent parts of the course, we turn to the empirical patterns of how Europe’s ‘dark legacies’ have left their traces in collective memories across the continent, paying attention to fascism and World War II, communism, as well as colonialism. The analysis combines comparisons between countries and European sub-regions with a more detailed focus on specific vectors of memory such as history writing, museums and film. A specific section is dedicated to the importance of Europe’s dark legacies for international relations, from foreign policy and the analysis of inter-state relations, to the institutionalization of transnational collective memory in the European Union.
Course Schedule
Mondays, 10.50 am to 12.30 pm Thursdays, 8.50 am to 10.30 am
Classroom: D107 Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students will be able to:
1. Appreciate the importance of ‘dark legacies’ for the development of European societies after 1945
2. Engage with theoretical concepts and debates in the study of collective memory 3. Discuss similarities and differences in how Europe’s fascist, communist and imperialist
past has been confronted across the continent
2 Course Requirements
1. Attendance and active participation (10 % of final grade) 2. Seminar presentation (20 % of final grade)
3. Two short critiques of readings (each 15 % of final grade) 4. Final Paper (40 % of final grade).
Contact Information Thomas Fetzer
Vienna, Quellenstrasse 51 | C422 Phone: +43 1 25230 2660 Email: fetzert@ceu.edu
Office hours: Mondays 9.00 am to 10.30 am
Alexander Etkind
Vienna, Quellenstrasse 51 | B113 Email: etkinda@ceu.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays 11 am to 12.30 pm
Ivan Nikolovski
Vienna, Quellenstrasse 51 | C401 Phone: +43 664 999 19 753
Email: Nikolovski_Ivan@phd.ceu.edu Office hours: Upon prior consultation
3 Course Outline
Seminar 1: Introduction (Alexander Etkind and Thomas Fetzer)
PART I: General issues and concepts
Seminar 2: Can there be a ‘collective memory’? (Thomas Fetzer)
Zerubavel, Eviatar (1996), ‘’Social memories: steps to a sociology of the past’, Qualitative Sociology 19 (3): 283-300
Bell, Duncan (2003) ‘Mythscapes’, The British Journal of Sociology 54(1): 63-81.
Seminar 3: Different concepts of collective and cultural memory (Thomas Fetzer)
Assmann, Aleida (2006), ‘Memory, Individual and Collective’, in Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 210-224.
Olick, Jeffrey K. (1999), ‘Collective Memory: The Two Cultures’, Sociological Theory 17 (3): 333- 348.
Seminar 4: Persistence and change (Thomas Fetzer)
Schumann, Howard and Jacqueline Scott (1989), ‘Generations and Collective Memories’, American Sociological Review 54 (3): 359-381.
Schwartz, Barry (1996), ‘Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II’, American Sociological Review 61 (5): 908-927.
Seminar 5: Collective memory and politics (Thomas Fetzer)
Bernhard, Michael and Jan Kubik (2014), ‘A Theory of the Politics of Memory’, in: Id. (eds.), Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration, Oxford: OUP.
Peter Verovsek (2016), ‘Collective memory, politics, and the influence of the past: The politics of memory as a research paradigm’, Politics, Groups and Identities, 4 (3): 529-543.
Seminar 6: Cultural memory and ‘dark legacies’: Trauma and mourning (Alexander Etkind) Jeffrey, Alexander (2012), Trauma: A Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, chapter 1.
Etkind, Alexander (2013) Warped Mourning. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, chapter 1.
4 PART II: Dark legacies in comparative perspective
Seminar 7: ‘Dark legacies’ in European collective memory: General patterns (Thomas Fetzer) Judt, Tony (2005), Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, London: Penguin, pp. 803-821.
Zhurzhenko, Tatiana (2007), ‘The Geopolitics of Memory’ Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-05-10-zhurzhenko-en.html
Robert Aldrich (2010), ‘Remembrances of Empires Past’, Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 7 (1): 1-19.
Seminar 8: Case studies (I): Germany (Thomas Fetzer)
Niven, Bill (2002), Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich, London/New York: Routledge, ch. 4.
Natan Sznaider (2021), ‘The Summer of Discontent: Achille Mbembe in Germany’, Journal of Genocide Research, 23 (3):412-19.
Seminar 9: Case studies (II): France (Thomas Fetzer)
Richard J. Golsan (2006), ‘The Legacy of World War II in France’, in: Richard Ned Lebow et. al.
(eds.), The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 73-101.
Itay Lotem (2016), Anti-racist activism and the memory of colonialism: race as Republican critique after 2005, Modern and Contemporary France, 24 (3): 283-98.
Seminar 10: Case studies (V): Russia and Ukraine (Alexander Etkind)
Snyder, Timothy (2015). "Integration and disintegration: Europe, Ukraine, and the world." Slavic Review 74.4: 695-707.
Mälksoo, Maria. "Militant memocracy in International Relations: Mnemonical status anxiety and memory laws in Eastern Europe." Review of International Studies 47.4 (2021): 489-507.
Seminar 11: Case studies (IV): Hungary (Thomas Fetzer)
Harms, Victoria (2017), ‘A Tale of Two Revolutions: Hungary’s 1956 and the Un-doing of 1989’, East European Politics and Societies, 31 (3): 479-499.
Margit Feischmidt (2020), ‘Memory Politics and Neonationalism: Trianon as Mythomoteur’, Nationalities Papers, 48 (1): 130-43.
Seminar 12: Case studies (III): Austria (study visit to Vienna downtown - Thomas Fetzer) Heidemarie Uhl (2011), ‘Of Heroes and Victims: World War II in Austrian Memory’, Austrian History Yearbook, 42: 185-200.
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PART III: Dark legacies and international relations, dark legacies as transnational memory narratives
Seminar 13: Dark legacies in post-1945 foreign policy (Thomas Fetzer)
Yuen Foong Khong (1992), Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam decisions of 1965, Princeton University Press, extracts.
Thomas U. Berger (1998), Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan, John Hopkins Press, extracts
Seminar 14: Dark legacies and inter-state conflict (Thomas Fetzer)
Taylor McConnell (2019), ‘Memory abuse, violence and the dissolution of Yugoslavia: a
theoretical framework for understanding memory in conflict’, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research’, 32 (3): 331-43.
Seminar 15: Dark legacies and inter-state cooperation and reconciliation (Thomas Fetzer) Jennifer Lind (2008), Sorry States. Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, extracts
Heloise Weber and Martin Weber (2020), Colonialism, genocide and International Relations: the Namibian–German case and struggles for restorative relations, European Journal of
International Relations, 26 (1-suppl.): 91-115.
Seminar 16: Dark legacies as transnational memories: The case of the European Union (Thomas Fetzer)
Mälksoo, Maria (2014) Criminalizing Communism: Transnational Mnemopolitics in Europe.
International Political Sociology 8(1): 82-99.
Aline Sierp (2020), ‘EU Memory Politics and Europe’s forgotten colonial past’, Interventions, 22 (6): 686-702.
Seminar 17: Dark legacies as transnational memories: The case of the Western Balkans (Ivan Nikolovski)
Milošević, Ana, and Tamara Trošt (2021) Introduction: Europeanisation and Memory Politics in the Western Balkans In: Milošević, Ana and Trošt, Tamara (eds.) Europeanisation and Memory Politics in the Western Balkans, 1–28. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hofman, Ana (2021) We Are the Partisans of Our Time’: Antifascism and Post-Yugoslav Singing Memory Activism. Popular Music and Society 44 (2): 157–74.
6 Seminar 18: Genocide and Memory (Alexander Etkind)
Lischer, Sarah Kenyon. "Narrating atrocity: genocide memorials, dark tourism, and the politics of memory." Review of International Studies 45.5 (2019): 805-827.
David, Lea. "Holocaust and genocide memorialisation policies in the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine." Peacebuilding 5.1 (2017): 51-66.
Etkind, Alexander. "Ukraine, Russia, and Genocide of Minor Differences." Journal of Genocide Research (2022): 1-19.
PART IV: Coming to terms with Europe’s dark legacies: Genres and vectors of memory
Seminar 19: Memory laws (Thomas Fetzer)
Nikolay Koposov (2018), Memory Laws, Memory Wars. The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia, Cambridge: CUP, pp. 1-24.
Cherviatsova, Alina. "On the frontline of European memory wars: memory laws and policy in Ukraine." European Papers 5.1 (2020): 119-136.
Seminar 20: Trials (Thomas Fetzer)
Douglas, Lawrence (2006), ‘The Didactic Trial: Filtering History and Memory into the Courtroom’, European Review 14 (4): 513-522.
Maria Malksoo (2017), ‘Kononov v. Latvia as an Ontological Security Struggle over rembemering the Second World War’, in Uladzislau Belavusau (ed.), Law and Memory: Towards Legal
Governance of History, Cambridge: CUP, pp. 91-108.
Stiina Loytomaki (2013), ‘The Law and Collective Memory of Colonialism: France and the Case of
‘Belated’ Transitional Justice’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 7: 205-23.
Seminar 21: Museums and memorials (Alexander Etkind)
Harris, Cecily. "German memory of the Holocaust: the emergence of Counter-Memorials." Penn History Review 17.2 (2010): 34-59.
Turunen, Johanna. "Decolonising European minds through heritage." International Journal of Heritage Studies 26.10 (2020): 1013-1028.
Seminar 22: History Teaching (Thomas Fetzer)
Sara A. Levi and Maia Sheppard (2018), ‘”Difficult knowledge” and the Holocaust in history education’, in Scott Alan Metzger and Lauren McArthur Harris (eds.), The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning, pp. 365-388.
Susanne Grindel (2013), ‘The End of Empire Colonial Heritage and the Politics of Memory in Britain’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, 5 (1): 33-49
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Seminar 23: Visual Arts and New Media (Alexander Etkind) Etkind, Warped Mourning, Chapter 5.
Kantsteiner, Wulf (2017), ‘Transnational Holocaust Memory, Digital Culture, and the end of reception studies’, in: Tea Sindbaek Andersen and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (eds.), The
Twentieth Century in European Memory: Transcultural mediation and reception, Leiden: Brill, pp.
305-344