Memory and History

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Dr Mari Paz Balibrea Enriquez
• 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 one

• Time
• Narrative, history and memory
• The state and memory
• The Holocaust paradigm
• The postcolonial and history: race and gender

Part two

• History, memory and the Third Reich
• Time, memory and the novel
• Postdictatorship and cultural production in Spain

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.