[H] = Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory (Heritage of Sociology Series). Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser. University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780226115962. [Preview with Google Books]
[R] = 
Rinehart, Richard, and Jon Ippolito. Re-Collection: Art, New Media and Social Memory. MIT Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780262027007. [Preview with Google Books]
| WEEK # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to the class and the themes of social memory |
Bazelon, Emily. "The Price of a Stolen Childhood." New York Times Magazine, January 24, 2013. Rosen, Jeffrey. "The Web Means The End of Forgetting." New York Times Magazine, July 21, 2010. |
| 2 | Memory Politics: Individual and Social |
[H] "Preface." [H] Chapter 1: Dreams and Memory Images. [H] Chapter 2: Language and Memory. [H] Chapter 3: The Reconstruction of the Past. Hacking, Ian. "Memoro-Politics." Chapter 15 in Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory. Princeton University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780691036427. Schacter, Daniel L. "The Memory Wars: Seeking Truth in the Line of Fire." Chapter 9 in Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. Basic Books, 1997. ISBN: 9780465075522. |
| 3 | Memory as a Collective Project |
Connerton, Paul. "Social Memory." Chapter 1 in How Societies Remember. Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780521270939. [Preview with Google Books] Gable, Eric, and Richard Handler. "Public History, Private Memory: Notes from the Ethnography of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, USA." Ethnos 65, no. 2 (2000): 237–52. Gable, Eric, Richard Handler, et al. "On the Uses of Relativism: Fact, Conjecture, and Black and White Histories at Colonial Williamsburg." American Ethnologist 19, no. 4 (1992): 791–805. |
| 4 | Field trip to the Museum of Afro American History, Boston, MA | No readings assigned |
| 5 | Memory and History |
Nora, Pierre. "General Introduction: Between Memory and History." In Realms of Memory: Rethinking the Past, Vol. 1 – Conflicts and Divisions. Columbia University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780231084048. Schwartz, Barry, Yael Zerubavel, et al. "The Recovery of Masada: A Study in Collective Memory." Sociological Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1986): 147–64. Zerubavel, Yael. "The Death of Memory and the Memory of Death: Masada and the Holocaust as Historical Metaphors." Representations 45 (1994): 72–100. |
| 6 | The Role of Monuments and Historical Sites in Social Memory |
Foote, Kenneth E. "The Veneration of Heroes and Martyrs." Chapter 2 in Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. University of Texas Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780292705258. Knudsen, Britta T., and Carsten Stage. "Online War Memorials: YouTube As a Democratic Space of Commemoration Exemplified Through Video Tributes to Fallen Danish Soldiers." Memory Studies 6, no. 4 (2013): 418–36. Musil, Robert. "Monuments." In Posthumous Papers of a Living Author. Translated from the German by Peter Wortsman. Archipelago, 2006. ISBN: 9780976395041. Sturken, Marita. "The Wall and the Screen Memory: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial." Chapter 2 in Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. University of California Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780520206205. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 7 | Politics of Remembering and Forgetting |
Buyandelger, Manduhai. "Introduction: The Return of the Suppressed." In Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226086569. [Preview with Google Books] ———. "Mobile Histories." Chapter 1 in Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226086569. [Preview with Google Books] ———. "Technologies of Forgetting, State Socialism, and Potential Memories." Chapter 2 in Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226086569. [Preview with Google Books] Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Translated by Peter Preuss. Hackett Publishing Company, 1980. ISBN: 9780915144945. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 8 | Nostalgia and Postsocialism |
Berdahl, Daphne. "Foreword by Michael Herzfeld." In On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. Edited and with an introduction by Matti Bunzl. Indiana University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780253221704. ———. "Goodbye Lenin, Aufwiedersehen GDR: On the Social Life of Socialism." Chapter 9 in On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. Edited and with an introduction by Matti Bunzl. Indiana University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780253221704. |
| 9 | Midterm | No readings assigned |
| 10 | Technology, New Media and Social Memory (1) |
[R] "Introduction." [R] Chapter 1: The Lost and the Saved. [R] Chapter 2: New Media and Social Memory. [R] Chapter 3: Death by Technology. [R] Chapter 4: Variability Machines. [R] Chapter 5: Metadata and the Historic Record. |
| 11 | Technology, New Media and Social Memory (2) |
[R] Chapter 6: Death by Institution. [R] Chapter 7: The Open Museum. [R] Chapter 8: Generation Emulation. [R] Chapter 9: Death by Law. |
| 12 | Summarize and discuss student projects |
[R] Chapter 10: Unreliable Archivists. [R] Chapter 11: Variable Organisms. [R] Chapter 12: Checking In. [R] Chapter 13: Only You Can Prevent the End of History. |