Syllabus
Course structure and assessment
This course will be taught in the form of a block course, spread over four days and eight sessions. Students are asked to read the required texts and view the films ahead of class and be prepared to discuss them.
The course will be assessed based on: 20% - Participation in class – special attention will be paid to the two sessions on Day 3, which have set class discussion questions. All students are asked to prepare a few points in advance and be prepared to speak in class. 30% - Group presentations. Topics will be made available on the first day, to be prepared for the final two sessions. 50% - Assessed essay of 5 pages + references due on 7 December 2018.
Syllabus
Day 1 (26 October 2018) – Session 1
Central Europe and Memory: Historical context + Theoretical Introduction
Required reading:
Astrid Erll, ‘Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction’, Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning(Berlin, 2008), 1-18.
Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak, ‘Introduction: Memory and Change in Eastern Europe: How Special?’, in Memory and Change in Eastern Europe: Eastern Perspectives, ed. Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak (Berghahn Books, 2015), 1-19.
Recommended reading:
Aleida Assmann, ‘Transformations between History and Memory’, Social Research75: 1 (2008), 49-72.
Day 1 (26 October 2018) – Session 2
Memory and Film
Required reading:
Astrid Erll, ‘Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory’, in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning(Berlin, 2008), 389-398.
Recommended reading:
Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 1-22; 121-129.
Required viewing:
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) (Film available here: https://uloz.to/tam/_FHtWPq3Gyhzv)
Day 2 (27 October 2018) – Session 1
Ostalgie and Material Culture in Germany
Required reading:
Anthony Enns, ‘The Politics of Ostalgie: post-socialist nostalgia in recent German film’, Screen 48:4 (2007), 475-491.
Jonathan Bach, ‘“The Taste Remains”: Consumption, (N)ostalgia, and the Production of East Germany’, Public Culture 14: 3 (2002), 545-556.
Recommended reading:
Daphne Berdahl, ‘“(N)Ostalgie” for the present: Memory, longing, and East German things’, Ethnos64: 2 (1999), 192 – 211.
Required viewing:
Good Bye, Lenin!(dir. Wolfgang Becker, 2004) (Film available here:https://uloz.to/tam/_xSN2WcSIGoz8)
Day 2 (27 October 2018) – Session 2
Post-Socialist Nostalgia in Central Europe
Required reading:
Maria Todorova, ‘Introduction: From Utopia to Propaganda and Back’, in Post-Communist Nostalgia, ed. Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 1-13.
Recommended reading:
Mitja Velikonja, “Lost in Transition: Nostalgia for Socialism in Post-Socialist Countries.” East European Politics and Societies23:4 (2009), 535–551.
Required viewing:
Pelíšky (Cosy Dens), dir. Jan Hřebejk, 1999. (Film available here: https://uloz.to/!ESWXE9uSlkRI/pelisky-cosy-dens-whole-film-eng-subs-avi)
Day 3 (9 November 2018) – Session 1
Memory and Place
Class discussion: Should monuments to authoritative or violent regimes be torn down?
Required reading:
Jacques Le Rider, ‘Mitteleuropa as a lieu de mémoire’, in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning(Berlin, 2008), 37-46.
Maja Czarnecka, ‘Poland consigns communist-era monuments to dustbin of history’, https://mg.co.za/article/2018-04-30-poland-consigns-communist-era-monuments-to-dustbin-of-history
Rick Lyman, ‘Political Rage Over Statues? Old News in the Old World’, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/europe/european-monuments-statues-communism.html
American Historical Association Statement on Confederate Monuments, https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/statements-and-resolutions-of-support-and-protest/aha-statement-on-confederate-monuments
Recommended reading:
Nora, Pierre, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989): 7-25.
Day 3 (9 November 2018) – Session 2
Memory Politics
Class discussion: What role should the state play in shaping understandings of the past?
Required reading:
Jiří Přibáň, ‘The Kundera Case and the Neurotic Collective Memory of Postcommunism’,https://verfassungsblog.de/the-kundera-case-and-the-neurotic-collective-memory-of-postcommunism/
Kristen Ghodsee, ‘Tale of “Two Totalitarianisms”: The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism’, History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History4: 2 (2014), 115-142.
Veronika Pehe, ‘When historical sources contradict political intent’ [Interview with Muriel Blaive], http://politicalcritique.org/cee/czech-republic/2015/blaive-archives-secret-police/
Recommended reading:
Dariusz Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance: A Ministry of Memory?’, in The Convolutions of Historical Politics, ed. A. Miller and M. Lipman (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2012).
Day 4 (10 November 2018) – Session 1
Assessed presentations
Day 4 (10 November 2018) – Session 2
Assessed presentations
Annotation
For much of the 20th century, the region of Central Europe was under the rule of authoritarian regimes. Today, this experience is history, but it also continues to be part of living memory.
How societies remember the past is not only a matter for history books, but also culture, whether understood as representations such as films and literature, or in its broader sense as a set of everyday practices. This course will revolve around the central question of the relationship between history and memory.
Drawing on examples mainly from the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, and spanning subjects such as cinema, monuments, nostalgia and material objects, this course will explore the diverse ways in which contemporary societies remember and commemorate key events of the 20th century. Covering both theory and practical case studies, we will investigate what role culture plays in sustaining memory and analyse the political uses of history.