Memory and History

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Dr Ann Lewis
• Assessment: a 5000-word essay (100%)

Memory has been at the centre of many debates on history and politics in the last decades. Through these, one can have a sense not only of how the present now relates to the past, but also of the ways in which recent trends in the humanities and the social sciences have reconfigured historical objects and political agency. More specifically, the focus on memory and its impact in history is a key move to understand our current categories of past, present and future and the relation the twenty-first century establishes with the twentieth. Moreover, interrogating the relationship of memory to State power and to issues of gender and race allows us to develop a critique of national identity and open history to new subjects and geographies. 

The first part of the module is offered to all students on the MA/MRes Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures. In the second part you will divide into different proposed strands according to your comparative or language-speaking area of studies and the expertise available in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication. This second part will vary year by year depending on the interests of incoming students and the availability of academic staff.

Indicative syllabus

Part 1

• Memory, history and temporality
• Ruins: tangible memories
• Memory, memorialisation and heritage
• Memory and history after the digital turn
• Necropolitics, space and memory

Part 2

Strand A: Memory and responsibity after the defeat

In this strand you will explore how three defeated nations in World War II - Japan, Italy and Germany - have faced a crisis of historical truth, handled their traumas and dealt with the problem of memory. We will interrogate the conflicts and contradictions regarding the way narratives have been articulated in the postwar period, assessing critically concepts such as guilt, responsibility, victimhood and negationism. You will be introduced to a variety of appropriate theoretical frameworks and epistemological tools allowing you to explore shifting conceptions of memory in the Japanese, Italian and German cultural contexts.

Strand B: Aesthetics and politics: the engagement of intellectuals in the Spanish Civil War

This strand will explore the retelling of the experience of being at war, the Spanish Civil War, by two intellectuals actively committed in the fight against fascism: André Malraux and Max Aub. Through a comparative exploration of their two novels, Malraux’s L’Espoir [Man’s Hope, 1937] and Aub’s Campo cerrado [Field of Honour, 1943], and respective national contexts, we will look at the impact that major historical events and their memories had in defining modernist and avant-garde writing, film and the political role of aesthetics.

By the end of this module you will be able to:

• competently reflect and critically engage with the categories associated with history and memory, their differences and how their study is culturally relevant
• understand the historical formation and Western roots of the category of history, and the meanings of its contemporary critiques in cultural realms
• understand the historical formation of the category of memory, its links with state formation and the resistance to official histories and the importance of the Holocaust paradigm to grasp its importance
• understand and discuss new concepts, philosophical discourses and disciplinary angles-of-approach for the study of culture, history and memory
• explore in writing historical and critical issues pertaining to the relations between culture, history/memory and politics that relate to, but also go beyond national boundaries to include, colonial, postcolonial, transnational and diasporic contexts
• make comparisons and connections across time periods, spaces and disciplines
• analyse and critically assess some of the dominant themes, salient authors and cultural objects within your chosen strand and cultural tradition
• demonstrate skills in close textual analysis
• show critical awareness of the meanings and functions of cultural production within the social and cultural contexts of their production and reception
• engage with complex cultural and historical criticism material.