Syllabus
Class Schedule: 1. Introductory Lecture: general presentation of the course's structure, questions, discussion of assignments.
Required Reading: None 2. Memory / Identity Bond. Memory / identity theoretical debates.
Both memory and identity are constructed on many levels (individual, societies, regions, nations and so on). This course aims to conceptually frame the link between memory and identity focusing on the politics of regional identity discourses.
Mandatory Readings:
- Jan Assmann , "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity", pp.125-133, available at: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/201/articles/95AssmannCollMemNGC.pdf .
- Dimitar Bechev , Constructing South-East Europe: The Politics of Regional Identity, RAMSES working paper 1/06, European Studies Center, University of Oxford, 2006, pp.3-23, available at: http: //www.sant. ox.ac.uk/esc/ramses/bechev.pdf
Recommended Readings:
Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond 'Identity'", Theory and Society , 29: 1-47, 2000.
-Nadia Kaneva, "Memories of Everyday Life in Communist Bulgaria: Negotiating Identity in Immigrant Narratives", Colorado Research in Linguistics , Vol.19, 2006, available online at: http://www.colorado.edu/ling/CRIL/Volume19_Issue1/paper_KANEVA.pdf 3 . History / Culture / Memory Interplay
History and Memory influence and shape one another. In this course we will discuss the distinction between social (common), political and historical memory and about the role of culture for identity building.
Mandatory Readings:
-Aleida Assmann, "Transformations between History and Memory", Social Research, Vol.75, No.1, Collective Memory and Collective Identity, (Spring 2008), pp. 49-72. Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40972052
-Dina Iordanova, "Whose is this memory?: Hushed narratives and discerning remembrance in Balkan Cinema", 2007, Cineaste 32: 22-27.
URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/41690504 4. Whose is this Song?
Nationalism, Memory and Identity through the Lens of Documentary Film
Screening: fragments from Adela Peeva’s documentary "Whose is this Memory"
Mandatory Reading:
Eleni Elefterias-Kostakidis, "The Film Whose is this Song? Nationalism and Identity through the Lens of Adela Peeva", Modern Greek Journal (Part A), 2014: https://www.academia.edu/9564507/The_Film_WHOSE_IS_THIS_SONG_Nationalism_and_Identity_through_the_lens_of_Adela_Peeva. 5. Individual Remembering and "Collective Memory"
Mandatory Readings:
-Anna Green, "Individual Remembering and "Collective Memory": theoretical Presuppositions and Contemporary Debates", in Oral History, Vol.32, No.2, Memory and Society, (Autumn, 2004), pp.35-44. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40179797
-Susan A. Crane, "Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory", The American Historical Review, Vol.102, No.5, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2171068 6. Conflict and Cultural Memory: A Case Study from Former Yugoslavia
What is the role of memory in conflict situations? Remembering a traumatic event can be a tool for social justice but also a means to perpetuating violence and injustice. How can memory be employed in divisive ways?
Mandatory Readings:
- Lynda E. Boose, "Crossing the River Drina: Bosnian Rape Camps, Turkish Impalement and Serb Cultural Memory", Sign: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol.21, No.1, Gender and Cultural Memory, 2002, pp. 71-96.
- Ilana R. Bet-El, "Unimagined Communities: The Power of Memory and the Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia" in J.W. Müller (ed.) Memory & Power in Post-War
Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 206- 222. 7.The Memory of Communism: Conflicts, Institutions, Actors
After twenty years, the contested memories of communism are being persistently reactivated by social and political actors. In this class we will examine by the means of the concrete case studies how the heritage of the communist past is‘re-contextualized’ and to what ends. We will also examine the opposition between memory and forgetting by bringing into focus a third category-"the unmemorable"
Screening: Video- Memory of my Youth in Communist Romania
Mandatory Readings:
-Nikolai Vukov, "The "Unmemorable" and the "Unforgettable": "Museumizing" the Socialist Past in Post-1989 Bulgaria", in Oksana Sarkisova and Peter Apor (eds.), Visions after the Fall: Museums and Cinema in the Reshaping of Popular Perceptions of the Socialist Past. Budapest: CEU Press available online at: http://books.openedition.org/ceup/686?lang=en
-Gabriela Cristea and Simina Radu-Bucurenci, "Raising the Cross: Exorcising Romania’s Communist Past in Museums, Memorials and Monuments", in Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor (eds.), Past for the Eyes: Cinema and Museums in Representing Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989, Budapest: CEU Press available online at: http://books.openedition.org/ceup/683?lang=it
Recommended Reading:
-Nikolai Vukov, "Cities, Memorial Sites, Memory: the Case of Plovdiv" in Our Europe. Ethnography-Ethnology-Anthropology of Culture, Vol. 2, 2013, pp.129-144 available online at: http://www.ptpn.poznan.pl/Wydawnictwo/czasopisma/our/OE-2013-129-144-Vukov.pdf
-Daniela Koleva, "Memories of the War and the War of Memories
Annotation
This course has a thematic focus and aims to disentangle the question of what happens to historical/cultural memory and cultural identity when national states from the Balkan region undergo transformations, transitions, displacements and fragmentations. It focuses on various case studies of collective and individual memory as a way to express, display and articulate individual and collective identities in the region, from old testimonies and oral history to world literature, film, theater (and other materializations of cultural memory that are not reduced only to "official narratives"). The purpose of this multidisciplinary endeavor is to lay the ground for a theoretical analysis of the relationship between memory and identity. During the course, the main theoretical arguments on cultural identity will be discussed and evaluated (e.g. essentialist theories of cultural identity versus constructivist approaches). We will examine the Balkans, as cultural entity and the territory where new states were created and "both majority and minority ethnic groups are mobilized in search of identity" (Appadurai, 2006). This course aims to stimulate critical thinking and to broaden student’s perspective in understanding the historical and political processes taking place in the region and how these processes are remembered and interpreted and to what ends.
Teaching Format: Mixture of Lecture and Seminar
Office Hours: Monday 12- 14 p.m. (please e-mail me by 11 a.m. on Sunday to let me know when you are coming. 98022179@fsv.cuni.cz).