Course Syllabus
I have prepared a DRAFT of the syllabus--do not take it as gospel please. But here it is:
Course Description
This graduate course explores how societies remember — and forget — through museums, monuments, memorials, and public history. We will investigate the politics of memory, the aesthetics of trauma, the ethics of representation, and the role of institutions in shaping collective memory across global contexts, from post-apartheid South Africa and Holocaust remembrance to the American South and post-Pinochet Chile. Through readings, discussions, virtual and physical exhibits, and critical writing, students will examine how memory is curated, contested, and mobilized for social justice or nationalist ends.
And, for now, here is the book list:
Recommended Books for Purchase (in order of use)
A lot of the readings will be articles, chapters, and excerpts that I will load up on Canvas. Nevertheless, there are several titles that we will read all the way through. I have indicated which ones are available as e-books at the library, but you still may want to purchase them:
- David Tell, Remembering Emmett Till (https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/19763500)
- Karen Cox, No Common Ground (https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/19010932)
- Clint Smith, How the Word Was Passed (https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/19210949)
- Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans (no e-book)
- Brian Ladd, Ghosts of Berlin (no e-book)
- Martin Murray, Commemorating and Forgetting (https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/14086204)
- Robin Autry, Desegregating the Past (https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/17048287)
And assignments:
What I am asking you to do is to consider and then “curate” a full memoryscape. By memoryscape, I mean a comprehensive, integrated (or, perhaps, fractured) memorial landscape rooted in a particular community. The scale that I think is easiest to work with would be the city, but that could be shrunken to a smaller neighborhood or community dense with history (e.g., Harlem, or the Venetian Ghetto or Soweto) or expanded to, say, a national memorial landscape. Either way, your final project will be based on and incorporate the following elements produced over the course of the semester:
- A short analysis of a key secondary text on important to your topic
- A brief summation of a key literary text relevant to your memoryscape
- An object or photograph with a comprehensive curatorial label
- A primary text with a comprehensive curatorial label
- A map with key locations and potential itineraries (you could use storymaps)
- A critical op-ed essay describing what is missing from or in need of revision in your memoryscape
- A full proposal designed to connect, integrate, modify, revise, and add to the memoryscape (you must include at least one memorial or marker)
Course Summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|