Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Specialized one-time graduate course offerings on topics related to the current research of school faculty of visiting professors.

COURSE DETAILS:

SPECIAL TOPICS IN COMMUNICATION - - THE MEDIA OF MEMORY: “Remembering & Bearing Witness to Political Violence”


Note: Advanced fourth year undergraduates can ask for permission from the instructor to enroll. Please note that sections of this seminar focus on violent events and issues of power. 

Overview:

In the rapidly changing transnational world, there is not only an increasing obsession for societies to remember and preserve the historical past (Huyssen 2003; Rothberg 2009); but also there have been increasing numbers of political movements that have demanded inquiries into events typically excised from public histories. These events include: war crimes, genocides, military occupations, residential schools, slavery and internment camps, that are tied to larger colonial and neo-imperial projects. Researchers, writers, filmmakers and artists from these movements have, on the one hand, been essential in challenging public histories and narratives that have either erased or justified the persecution of their communities; and, on the other hand, have examined the traumatic effects of these violent legacies on their communities and the members of the perpetrator societies. Their research has been the foundation of a growing area in the field of Memory Studies that focuses on memory and political violence. There are many challenges in researching political violence. In many cases, the records have been destroyed, and, when found, the perspective is that of the perpetrators; or they are framed in medicalized terms, reducing survivors to passive victims. In response, scholars, writers and artists have examined the problems of recalling violent events, and have developed cultural forms and practices to re-member, re-present and bear witness to them.

This seminar begins by introducing the complicated nature of memory in a highly mediated, transnational world, especially with regard to atrocities that circulate across different borders and times. We then examine conventional forms of research (archival research and interviewing) to show the limits and possibilities of academic methodologies in revealing power relations and defensive mechanisms at play in the production of knowledge about the past. The next section introduces studies on the nature of traumatic “memory”, followed by research on different media of memory such as: the body and senses (Million 2013); the practice of writing/interpreting texts (Cho 2006); photography (Hirsch 2012); and experimental art (Bennett 2006). The last section examines issues regarding bearing witness. Students will be expected read, discuss, and give regular seminar presentations on the readings (leading the discussions rather than PowerPoint summaries).

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: