SOCIAL MEMORY Fall 2012
4 credits course
Lecturer: Vlad Naumescu E-mail:naumescuv@ceu.hu
Class: Monday 1.30- 5.10
Office hours: Tuesday and by appointment
Course description
This course explores the growing field of memory studies, the roots of our interest in memory and the role it plays in contemporary society. Memory is multivalent and omnipresent, part of the politics of regret that marks our political culture, the commemorative drive of the last century and the ubiquitous nostalgia for the past. The overwhelming presence of memory in public discourse and science has altered significantly the way we remember, forget or imagine our past. But this obsession with memory has also led some to question its conceptual relevance in social sciences. The course proposes thus a critical appraisal of memory studies based on the premise that the study of memory provides an excellent opportunity for engaging in a genuine interdisciplinary endeavor. It starts by defining the field of research at the intersection of history, anthropology, sociology and psychology and examines the emergence of ‘memory’ as an object of study within these disciplines, focusing on the interplay between individual and collective memory. In the second part it presents a series of case studies that expose the processes through which individual memories are shaped by larger collectivities, the cultural construction of trauma and the ways in which symbols, practices, spaces and objects become means to articulate and legitimate personal biographies, collective identities and memory projects.
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of the course students should: a) gain knowledge of various theoretical and empirical approaches to memory in historical and social sciences b) develop an interdisciplinary approach to memory by bringing together the conceptual and methodological tools of the respective disciplines in concrete case studies c) assess and refine their working definition of memory, becoming aware of the advantages and limitations of current approaches d) be able to develop adequate methodologies for approaching ‘memory’ in their empirical research e) learn to formulate research questions and articulate an empirically-based argument in writing.
Course Requirements
This course is based on weekly lectures and seminars that rely heavily on students’
contributions and discussions of the assigned readings and films screened in class.
Additional readings related to the films will be provided during the course. Students have to prepare class presentations based on the readings and their own examples, and
studies related to their own research or be ready to engage with a specific topic from the field of memory studies for the final paper. The final grade is based on class participation (10%), student presentations (30%) and a research paper (60%).
Recommended readings and readers (available in the library)
Antze, P. and M. Lambek. 1996.Tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory.
New York ; London, Routledge.
Connerton, P. 1989. How societies remember. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1989.
Halbwachs, M., and A. Coser Lewis. 1992.On collective memory.The Heritage of sociology. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.
Misztal, B. A. 2003.Theories of Social Remembering.Theorizing Society.
Maidenhead Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Olick, Jeffrey K. Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy. 2011.The Collective Memory Reader.Oxford University Press.
Olick, J. K. ed. 2003.States of Memory. Continuities, Conflicts and
Transformations in National Retrospection.Politics, History & Culture.
Durham, London: Duke University Press.
Radstone, S. and Bill Schwartz. 2010.Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates.New York: Fordham University Press.
Wood, N. 1999.Vectors of Memory. Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. Oxford, New York: Berg.
Week 1. The Emergence of Memory Studies
Klein, Lee. 2000. On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse.
Representations 69: 127-150.
Blight, D. W. 2009. The Memory Boom: Why and Why Now? inMemory in Mind and Culture. Edited by P. Boyer and J. V. Wertsch, pp. 238-251. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Week 2. From Collective to Social Memory
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992.On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 37-51.
Connerton, Paul. 1989. Social Memory. In:How Societies Remember. Pp. 6-40.
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Olick, J. 1999. "Collective memory: The Two Cultures."Sociological Theory 17(3):
333-348.
Week 3. Memory and History
Nora, Pierre. 1989 Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.
Representations 26 : 7-24.
Burke, P. 1989. History as Social Memory. InMemory,History, Culture and the Mind. Edited by T. Butler, pp. 97-113. Oxford, New York: Basil Blackwell.
Assmann, J. 2006. What is Cultural Memory? InReligion and cultural memory: ten studies.Cultural memory in the present. Pp. 1-26. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press.
Week 4. Memory as Cultural Transmission
Goody, J. 1998. Memory in Oral Tradition. InMemory.Edited by Fara, P. and K.
Patterson. Pp. 73-94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paxon, M. 2005. Memory’s Topography. InSolovyovo: the story of memory in a Russian village. pp. 1-25. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.
Sarro, R. 2008. Elders' Cathedrals and Children's Marbles: Dynamics of Religious Transmission among the Baga of Guinea, inOn the margins of religion. Edited by F.
Pine and J. d. Pina-Cabral, pp. 187-203. New York: Berghahn Books.
Week 5. The Critics of Memory: Theoretical & Methodological Challenges Kansteiner, Wolf 2002. Finding Meaning in Memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies.History and Theory 41: 179-197.
Berliner, David 2004. “The abuses of memory: Reflections on the memory boom in anthropology.”Anthropological Quarterly 78(1): 183-197.
Confino, Alon. 1997. Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method.
AHR Forum.American Historical Review. Dec 1997, Vol. 102(5): 1386-1403.
Week 6. The Politics of Memory: Paradigms
Wood, N. 1999. Public Memory and Postconventional Identity. InVectors of
Memory. Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. Pp 39-59 Oxford, New York: Berg.
Olick, J. K. 2003. What Does It Mean to Normalize the Past? Official Memory in German Politics since 1989. InStates of Memory. Continuities, Conflicts and
Transformations in National Retrospection,Politics, History & Culture. Edited by J.
K. Olick, pp. 259-288. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
Shaw, Rosalind. 2007. Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone. The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1:
183-207.
Week 7. The Ethics of Remembrance
Kwon, H. 2010. The Ghosts of War and the Ethics of Memory, inOrdinary ethics:
anthropology, language, and action, Edited by M. Lambek, pp. 400-413. New York:
Fordham University Press.
Kapralski, S. and Wolentarska-Ochman. 2006 Memory and Commemoration: The Case of Jedwabne. InHistory and Memory, Volume 18 (1), Spring/Summer 2006.
Burchianti, M. 2004. Building Bridges of Memory: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Cultural Politics of Maternal Memories.History & Anthropology 15:133-150.
Week 8. Trauma and its Critics
Hacking, Ian. 1996. Memory sciences, memory politics. InTense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. Ed. P. Antze and M. Lambek. New York and London:
Routledge, pp. 67-88.
Kirmayer, L. 1996. Landscapes of Memory: Trauma, Narrative, and Dissociation. In Tense Past.pp. 173-198.
Kenny, Michael. 1996. Trauma, Time, Illness, and Culture. An Anthropological Approach to Traumatic Memory. InTense Past.pp. 151-171.
Week 9. Autobiographical Memory: from Individual to Social Remembrance Bloch, M. 1998. Autobiographical Memory and the Historical Memory of the More Distant Past. InHow we think they think: anthropological approaches to cognition, memory, and literacy. Boulder, Colorado; Oxford, Westview Press; pp 114-127.
Cappelletto, F. 2003. Long-term memory of extreme events: from autobiography to history.JRAI (N.S.) 9:241-260.
Tschunggnall, Karoline, and Harald Welzer. 2002. Rewriting Memories: Family Recollections of the National Socialist Past in Germany.Culture and Psychology 8(l):
130-145.
Week 10. The Media of Memory
Strathern, A. 1996. Habit or Habitus? Theories of Memory, the Body, and Change. In Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor; The University of Michigan Press. Pp. 25-39.
Dijck, J. v. 2007.Mediated memories in the digital age.Cultural memory in the present. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. pp. 1-26.
Radley, Alan. 1990. Artifacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past. In: David Middelton and Derek Edwards (eds). Collective Remembering. Pp. 46-59. London/New Bury/New Delhi:
Sage.
Week 11. The Memory of Loss (and the Loss of Memory)
Hirsch, M. 2008. The Generation of Postmemory.Poetics Today29(1): 103-128.
Permanent link:www.columbia.edu/~mh2349/papers/generation.pdf
Kidron, Carol. 2009. Toward an Ethnography of Silence: The Lived Presence of the Past in the Everyday Life of Holocaust Trauma Survivors and Their Descendants in Israel.Current Anthropology 50(1): 5-27.
Forty, Adrian. 1999. Introduction. In: Forty, Adrian and Susanne Küchler (eds).The Art of Forgetting.Pp. 1-18. Oxford/New York: Berg.
Week 12. Nostalgia
Boym, Svetlana. 2007. Nostalgia and Its Discontents.The Hedgehog Review7-18.
Permanent link:www.iasc-culture.org/eNews/2007_10/9.2CBoym.pdf
Boyer, Dominic. 2006. Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany.
Public Culture 18:361-381.
