FREN 6225

The Politics of Memory: Uses of the Past

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.

This course calls into question the public use of history. The past is permanently mobilized according to the culture and the problems of the present. Over the last decades, "memory" - a general concept used as a synonym for remembering, history, imagination, or representations of the past - arose at the heart of the public sphere, becoming an object of struggles.  In some historical circumstances, the past is suddenly "reactivated" and irrupts in the present by claiming its "rights," the end of oblivion, and rescue of the vanquished.  Considering some well-known controversies about slavery, colonialism, fascism, communism, civil wars, the Holocaust, etc., the course aims at exploring how collective memories are interwoven with cultural industry, public policies (museums, commemorations, laws, etc.), and history writing.

When Offered Spring.

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