Week 4 Notes

Week 4 (2/8- 2/10)

2/8

Discussed:

Shoah, 1985

  • Film directed by Claude Lanzemann that explored the memory of the Polish Holocaust from the perspective of witnesses, survivors, and perpetrators.

Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France

  • Memories and tradition were what created a nation, criticized the French revolutionaries for disregarding their past
  • Argued that tradition should be honored in society

Ernest Renan, from “What is a Nation?”

-Argued that a shared collective memory was a more important factor in building a nation than nationality, language, or geography.

Students discussed their readings on history and memory, each student read two from the following list:

  • Aleida Assmann, from “Canon and Archive” – on the differences between collections of sources that illustrate a collective memory and sources that illustrate a singular history
  • Walter Benjamin, from “The Storyteller” and “Theses on the Philosophy of History” – on modernity
  • M. Christine Boyer, from The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments – on what memories are placed in city squares or in museums affect what stories are told
  • Peter Burke, from “History as Social Memory”
  • Paul Connerton, from How Societies Remember – on inscribed memory
  • Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, from Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History – how public broadcastings act as works of collective memory
  • Andreas Huyssen, from “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia” – on late modernity
  • Reinhard Koselleck, from “War Memorials: Identity Formations of the Survivors”
  • Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, from “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory”
  • Michel-Rolph Trouillot, from “Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era” – how public apologies operate for both the recipient and the giver of an apology, and why they are so much more common today
  • James Young, from At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture – on counter memory

2/10

-students shared ideas/drafts for their first paper