Sylabus
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 .
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
- 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 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</e
Anotace
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, theatre (and other materializations of cultural memory that are not reduced only to "official narratives"). The purpose of this multidisciplinary endeavour 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 a 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 students’ 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 10.30- 12.30 (please e-mail me by 11 a.m. at the latest on Sunday to let me know when you are coming to consult with me at maria.asavei@fsv.cuni.cz.)