Trauma Studies and Cultural Memory in the USA 3301-KA2527-2ST
We accumulate memories from the moment we are born to the day we die. We keep them in our minds, in pictures we take, and in scars on our bodies. What happens with memories, however, when they travel from an individual or family to society or nation?
This course explores how individuals, societies, and nations remember and how the traumatic past shapes collective identities. How can the memories of one generation who lived through traumatic events be transferred to the younger one whose (post)memory can mainly be based on imagination and fantasy?
We will examine the ethics and politics of memory and the role of media in the perception of the past in the USA. A range of theoretical readings will contextualize our case studies, which include 9/11, the legacy of slavery in the US and the history of its commemorations, the post-George Floyd BLM and cancel culture, the parallels between Black and Jewish experience, as well as the import of European traumas to the US. We will sometimes problematize North American examples with the South American and European examples (e.g., Jewish revival, post-communist nostalgia).
PDFs of readings will be provided.
Selected Sessions
● American Memory Boom: Why and Why Now?
● History—Memory—Identity
● Individual Trauma: Between the Clinical and Social
● Cultural Trauma and Trauma Culture
● Post-memory and Transgenerational Transmission
● Post-memory and the Politics
● Trauma, Performance, and the Archive
● Media of Memory, Media of Trauma, part 1: Museums and Canons
● Media of Memory, Media of Trauma, part 2: Space and Memorials
● Media of Memory, Media of Trauma, part 3: Invention of Tradition and Commemorations
● Nostalgia and Its Discontents
Selected Case Studies
● Slavery and its legacy: as part of the US culture and history; as the return of the repressed; as post-memory and transgenerational transfer (e.g., post-Traumatic-Slave-Syndrome); as the language of the “Z” generation
● Post-George Floyd-Culture: Black Lives Matter; “cancel culture” (debate over monuments and memorials, e.g., “Silent Sam,” General Robert Lee; Theodor Roosevelt); film, e.g., (Gone with the Wind); education curricula, etc.
● 1968 Olympics “Black Power Salute” as “memory” and as history
● American artists and racial violence (e.g., Sanford Biggers)
● “9/11”: as a New York tragedy, as a national tragedy; as the politically construed foundational trauma imprinting the 21st-century American identity; as the example construction of social trauma (e.g., agents of “spiral of signification,” media distribution, social naturalizing)
● US memorial culture in space: 9/11 memorials, war memorials, the Holocaust memorials; slavery memorials; plantation tourism; American museums.
● US memorial culture as national invented traditions (e.g., national traditions of Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, 4th of July); recently invented traditions (e.g., “Black History Month”)
● Cultural and political “discovery” and acknowledgment of the “First Nations;” cultural and memorial markings (e.g., territorial acknowledgment, national parks)
● American counter-culture and the memory of Vietnam (e.g., Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner Live at Woodstock)
Type of course
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Students will be able to:
K_W01 identify and characterize on an advanced level the place and status of memory studies and trauma studies within the humanities
K_W02 describe on an advanced level the current trends in literary and cultural studies research within American studies, particularly in areas relevant to memory studies
K_W04 characterize on an advanced level the principles of research design in literary and culture studies with special focus on the application of methods and tools in formulating research problems, especially in the area of memory studies and trauma studies
K_W05 identify the notions and principles pertinent to intellectual property and copyright
Abilities
Students will be able to:
K_U01 apply advanced terminology and notions pertinent to memory and trauma studies
K_U02 apply advanced research methodology within literary and culture studies and memory and trauma studies studies, respecting ethical norms and copyright law.
K_U03 apply knowledge obtained during the course to account for and solve a problem, thereby completing a research task related to memory and trauma studies
K_U04 analyse literary and cultural phenomena related to cultural memory and draw generalizations on their basis in the context of societal, historical and economic factors on an advanced level
K_U05 discern alternative methodological paradigms within the discipline of literary studies, culture and religion studies, especially in the field of memory and trauma studies
K_U06 find information in various sources and critically assess its usefulness for research related to the topic of the MA project
Social competences
Students will be ready to:
K_K02 apply knowledge and skills obtained during the course to undertake lifelong learning, as well as personal and professional development
K_K03 take responsibility for performing one’s professional duties, with due respect for the work of others, obey and develop the ethical norms in professional and academic settings related to the disciplines included on the curriculum of American studies, with particular emphasis on issues of cultural memory and trauma
K_K04 assess critically one’s own knowledge and skills related to memory and trauma studies
K_K06 value cultural heritage and cultural diversity as well as individual opinions
Assessment criteria
- attendance
- active participation in class
- responses to weekly readings
- group discussion leading
- submission and presentation of “case studies.”
- presentation of the final project in class
- final project (“digital scrapbook” on the intersecting biographical and cultural memory)
Bibliography
Selected theoretical bibliography (most theoretical texts are juxtaposed with visual examples):
● Aleida Assmann, from “Canon and Archive” (pp. 334–338)
● Aleida Assmann, “Europe’s Divided Memory”
● Theodor Adorno, from “Valéry Proust Museum” and “In Memory of Eichendorff” (pp. 110–113)
● Jeffrey Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma” (1–31)
● Uilleam Blacker, “Living among the Ghosts of Others: Urban Postmemory in Eastern Europe” (pp. 173–194)
● Svetlana Boym, “Introduction” (xiii-xix), “Restorative Nostalgia: Conspiracies and Return to Origin” (pp. 41-48) and “Reflective Nostalgia: Virtual Reality and Collective Memory” (pp. 49-55) from The Future of Nostalgia
● Cathy Caruth, “Introduction” (pp. 3-12) and “Introduction” to Part II: Recapturing the Past (pp. 151-157) from Trauma: Explorations in Memory
● Cathy Caruth, “The Wound and the Voice” (pp. 1-6) and “Traumatic Awakenings: Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory” (pp. 91-112) from Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History
● Maurice Halbwachs, from The Collective Memory (pp. 139–150)
● Judith Herman, from Trauma (pp. tba)
● Marianne Hirsch, from “The Generation of Postmemory” from Poetics Today (pp. 103-125)
● Dominick LaCapra, “Trauma, Absence, Loss” from Writing History, Writing Trauma
● Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
● Orlando Patterson, from Slavery and Social Death (pp. 279–283)
● Barry Schwartz, from Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of American Memory (242–249)
● Art Spiegelman, Maus
● Michael Rothberg, Implicated Subject
● Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: “Acts of Transfer” (pp. 1-52); “You Are Here: H.I.J.O.S and the DNA of Performance” (pp. 161-190)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: