SOCIAL MEMORY

Fall 2012

4 credits course

Lecturer: Vlad Naumescu E-mail: naumescuv@ceu.hu

Class: Monday 1.30- 5.10Office hours: Tuesday and by appointment

Course descriptionThis course explores the growing field of memory studies, the roots of our interest inmemory and the role it plays in contemporary society. Memory is multivalent andomnipresent, part of the politics of regret that marks our political culture, thecommemorative drive of the last century and the ubiquitous nostalgia for the past. Theoverwhelming presence of memory in public discourse and science has alteredsignificantly the way we remember, forget or imagine our past. But this obsessionwith memory has also led some to question its conceptual relevance in socialsciences. The course proposes thus a critical appraisal of memory studies based on thepremise that the study of memory provides an excellent opportunity for engaging in agenuine interdisciplinary endeavor. It starts by defining the field of research at theintersection of history, anthropology, sociology and psychology and examines theemergence of ‘memory’ as an object of study within these disciplines, focusing on theinterplay between individual and collective memory. In the second part it presents aseries of case studies that expose the processes through which individual memoriesare shaped by larger collectivities, the cultural construction of trauma and the ways inwhich symbols, practices, spaces and objects become means to articulate andlegitimate personal biographies, collective identities and memory projects.

Learning outcomesUpon completion of the course students should: a) gain knowledge of varioustheoretical and empirical approaches to memory in historical and social sciences b)develop an interdisciplinary approach to memory by bringing together the conceptualand methodological tools of the respective disciplines in concrete case studies c)assess and refine their working definition of memory, becoming aware of theadvantages and limitations of current approaches d) be able to develop adequatemethodologies for approaching ‘memory’ in their empirical research e) learn toformulate research questions and articulate an empirically-based argument in writing.

Course RequirementsThis 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. Studentshave to prepare class presentations based on the readings and their own examples, andthey should be actively involved in every class. They are encouraged to work on case

2

studies related to their own research or be ready to engage with a specific topic fromthe field of memory studies for the final paper. The final grade is based on classparticipation (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. NewYork: 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? in Memory in Mindand 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 ChicagoPress. 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

3

Nora, Pierre. 1989 Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.Representations 26 : 7-24.

Burke, P. 1989. History as Social Memory. In Memory, History, Culture and theMind. Edited by T. Butler, pp. 97-113. Oxford, New York: Basil Blackwell.

Assmann, J. 2006. What is Cultural Memory? In Religion and cultural memory: tenstudies. Cultural memory in the present. Pp. 1-26. Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press.

Week 4. Memory as Cultural Transmission

Goody, J. 1998. Memory in Oral Tradition. In Memory. Edited by Fara, P. and K.Patterson. Pp. 73-94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paxon, M. 2005. Memory’s Topography. In Solovyovo: the story of memory in aRussian village. pp. 1-25. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

Sarro, R. 2008. Elders' Cathedrals and Children's Marbles: Dynamics of ReligiousTransmission among the Baga of Guinea, in On 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 ofcollective memory studies. History and Theory 41: 179-197.

Berliner, David 2004. “The abuses of memory: Reflections on the memory boom inanthropology.” 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. In Vectors ofMemory. 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 inGerman Politics since 1989. In States of Memory. Continuities, Conflicts andTransformations 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 ReconciliationCommission in Sierra Leone . The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1:183-207.

4

Week 7. The Ethics of Remembrance

Kwon, H. 2010. The Ghosts of War and the Ethics of Memory, in Ordinary 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: TheCase of Jedwabne. In History and Memory, Volume 18 (1), Spring/Summer 2006.

Burchianti, M. 2004. Building Bridges of Memory: The Mothers of the Plaza deMayo and the Cultural Politics of Maternal Memories. History & Anthropology15:133-150.

Week 8. Trauma and its Critics

Hacking, Ian. 1996. Memory sciences, memory politics. In Tense past: culturalessays 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. InTense Past. pp. 173-198.

Kenny, Michael. 1996. Trauma, Time, Illness, and Culture. An AnthropologicalApproach to Traumatic Memory. In Tense Past. pp. 151-171.

Week 9. Autobiographical Memory: from Individual to Social Remembrance

Bloch, M. 1998. Autobiographical Memory and the Historical Memory of the MoreDistant Past. In How 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 tohistory. JRAI (N.S.) 9:241-260.

Tschunggnall, Karoline, and Harald Welzer. 2002. Rewriting Memories: FamilyRecollections 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. InBody Thoughts. Ann Arbor; The University of Michigan Press. Pp. 25-39.

Dijck, J. v. 2007. Mediated memories in the digital age. Cultural memory in thepresent. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. pp. 1-26.

5

Radley, Alan. 1990. Artifacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past. In: David Middelton andDerek 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 Today 29(1): 103-128.Permanent link: www.columbia.edu/~mh2349/papers/generation.pdf

Kidron, Carol. 2009. Toward an Ethnography of Silence: The Lived Presence of thePast in the Everyday Life of Holocaust Trauma Survivors and Their Descendants inIsrael. Current Anthropology 50(1): 5-27.

Forty, Adrian. 1999. Introduction. In: Forty, Adrian and Susanne Küchler (eds). TheArt of Forgetting. Pp. 1-18. Oxford/New York: Berg.

Week 12. Nostalgia

Boym, Svetlana. 2007. Nostalgia and Its Discontents. The Hedgehog Review 7-18.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.