How do we imagine the past? What techniques do we – as individuals and as societies – use to remember, describe, and explain it? How does the memory of the past affect our understandings of who we are? How and why does the past became politicized? These questions were important to a range of writers, historians, artists, philosophers, and politicians in twentieth-century Europe, who over the course of the century became increasingly convinced that historical memory was central to individual, communal, and national identity. This conviction has led to both serious scholarly investigations into memory’s operations and, in some cases, to attempts to control memory and historical narratives for political gain.
This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of memory and history to explore historical memory’s role in shaping twentieth-century European politics and identities. We will begin by exploring different theoretical approaches to the study of individual and collective memory. We will then turn to important case studies that have played an outsized role in shaping European memory culture – including the memory of World War I and World War II, the Holocaust, European imperialism, and Eastern European communism. Along the way, we will explore different “sites” of memory – including monuments, memorials, museums, memoirs, novels, and films. We’ll also trace the complex interplay between collective memory and collective forgetting.
This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of memory and history to explore historical memory’s role in shaping twentieth-century European politics and identities. We will begin by exploring different theoretical approaches to the study of individual and collective memory. We will then turn to important case studies that have played an outsized role in shaping European memory culture – including the memory of World War I and World War II, the Holocaust, European imperialism, and Eastern European communism. Along the way, we will explore different “sites” of memory – including monuments, memorials, museums, memoirs, novels, and films. We’ll also trace the complex interplay between collective memory and collective forgetting.
- Teacher: Christina Carroll
This course follows the history of the Middle East from the late Ottoman period to the Arab Spring with a focus on the political, cultural, social, and intellectual changes that have occurred over the past 150 years. We will begin by following the ways in which political pressures from Europe and the spread of new ideas led to the transformation and breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We will then consider how European powers attempted to control and reshape the Middle East in the years following World War I and trace the formation of the new nation-states that emerged in that era. Finally, we will explore the contradictions and tensions that have continued to beset these nation-states in the contemporary period.
- Teacher: Christina Carroll
