social memory: narrative, mementoes, embodiment, and ... - Wings

SOCIAL MEMORY: NARRATIVE, MEMENTOES, EMBODIMENT, AND FORGETTING
APY 575, Fall 2007
Tuesdays 3.30-6.10pm – 351 Fillmore
Prof. Ana Mariella Bacigalupo
anab@buffalo.edu, 716-645-2414 Ext 109
Office Hours: Tuesdays 12-2pm, 363 Fillmore
In this age of commemorations, the disciplines of history and anthropology have entered a fascinating and
challenging phase of their relationship. Out of this dialogue between disciplines, a field of investigation
about social memory has emerged. This course critically charts the history of social memory in the
Humanities and in anthropology, in particular, reflecting on what social memory is and what are the
significant problems in studying it. We shall focus on history as it is lived by people themselves in
various cultural environments, emphasizing how remembrances are shared and transmitted by social
groups, and how places, bodies and objects contribute to materialize individual biography and shared
history.
READINGS
The following required texts for the course can be purchased at “Talking Leaves Bookstore” 3150 Main
Street; Tel: 716-837-8554). These texts are also available on reserve at Lockwood library. Please have
your books by the first week of class.
-Portelli, Alessandro The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History
SUNY Series in Oral and Public History.
-Trouillot, Michel-Rolph Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Boston: Beacon press.
-Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
-Werbner, Richard (ed). Memory and the Postcolony. London: Zed Books.
You can download the articles and book chapters (marked with a *) from the course website on UB
Learns.
COURSE FORMAT
This course is a working seminar. Most of the classroom content will be provided by our discussions.
Our discussions will focus on the relationship between your various research projects and interests and
the main ideas developed in the readings. It is extremely important that you think about the readings
before coming to class.
1) You will be responsible for turning in three reaction questions to the main ideas in the
readings assigned every class. Please share your ideas with the rest of the class during our class
discussions. Your participation in the seminar is important. If you miss more than three seminar
sessions you will fail the course.
2) You will also be responsible for presenting the main ideas of the texts assigned for one
class and the questions/issues they raise. Please provide the class with an outline. You do not
have to write additional reaction questions the day you lead a seminar discussion.
3) Each student will be pursuing independent research related to the seminar’s central
themes. You
will be responsible for presenting you research to the class as well as turning in a fifteen page
research paper at the end of the semester. Please come and see me early on in the semester to
discuss your paper topic.
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GRADING
Your course grade will be based on the following:
1) Class participation and discussion 15%
2) Leading of seminar discussion 20%
3) Reaction questions 15%
4) Oral presentation of your paper 20%
5) Final paper (15 pages double spaced ) 30%
INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF MEMORY STUDIES
-*Golden Charles 2005 (Book review) “Where does Memory Reside, and Why Isn’t it History?” Pp 270-
274.
-*Klein, Lee. 2000. “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse.”
-*Winter, Jay. 2000. “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the Memory Boom in Contemporary
Historical Studies.”
-*Berliner, David. 2005. “The Abuses of Memory: Reflections on the Memory Boom in Anthropology.”
WHAT IS COLLECTIVE MEMORY (I)
-Connerton, Paul. “Social Memory”. In: How Societies Remember.
- *Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory Pp. 37-51.
-*Nora, Pierre. 1989 “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.”
-*Gedi, Noa and Yigal Elam. 1996. “Collective Memory: What Is It?”
WHAT IS COLLECTIVE MEMORY (II)?
-*Thomson, Frisch & Hamilton. 1994. “The Memory and History Debates…”
-*Funkenstein, Amos. 1989. “Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness.”
-*Kansteiner, Wulf. 2002. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique…”
-*Susan Crane 1997 “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory”
HISTORY, MEMORY AND METHODOLOGY (1)
-*Frisch “Presenting and Receiving Oral History Across Cultural Space” In A Shared Authority
-*Frisch “Oral History, Documentation and the Mystification of Power” In A Shared Authority
-Portelli Chap 1 & 2 In The Death of Luigi Trastulli
ORAL HISTORY, MEMORY AND METHODOLOGY (1I)
-Portelli Chap 3, 4, 6 & 9 In The Death of Luigi Trastulli
POWER AND THE PRODUCTION OF HISTORY
-Trouillot, Michel Rolp Chapters 1, 3, 4 & 5 In Silencing the Past
HISTORICITIES
-*Hirsch & Stewart “Introduction: Ethnographies of Historicity”
-*N Whitehead “Introduction” In Histories and Historicities in Amazonia Pp VII-XX
-*Reeve “Cauchu Uras: Lowland Quichua Histories of the Amazon Rubber Boom” in Rethinking History
and Myth.
-*Santos Granero, Fernando 1998 “Writing History into the Landscape: Space, Myth, and Ritual in
Contemporary Amazonia.”
MULTIPLE AND CONTESTED PASTS
-*Appadurai, Arjun. 1981. “The Past as a Scarce Resource.”
-*Bloch, Maurice “Time, Narrative and the Multiplicity of Representations of the Past”
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-*Rappaport, Joanne. “Introduction: Interpreting the Past” In: The Politics of Memory Pp 1-27.
-*Rappaport, Joanne “Julio Niquinas, a Contemporary Nasa Historian” In: The Politics of Memory Pp
175-195.
MEMORY, POST-COLONIALISM, AND NATION BUILDING
-Werbner “Beyond Oblivion” In Memory and the Post-colony.
-*Jennifer Cole 1998 “The Work of Memory in Madagascar”
-*Herzfeld, Michael. 1991. “Histories in Conflict.” In: A Place in History..
-Meyer, Birgit. "Make a Complete Break with the Past: Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian
Pentecostal Discourse” In Memory and the Postcolony.
TRAUMATIC AND VICARIOUS MEMORIES
-*Lambek &Antze. “Introduction: Forecasting Memory” In Tense Past: Essays in Trauma and Memory.
-*Climo, Jacob. 1995. “Prisoners of Silence: A Vicarious Holocaust Memory.”
-*Tschunggnall &Welzer 2002 “Rewriting Memories: Family Recollections of the National Socialist Past
in Germany.”
-*Stewart, Michael. 2004. “Remembering without Commemoration: The Mnemonics and Politics of
Holocaust Memories among European Roma.”
EMBODIED AND PERFORMATIVE MEMORIES
-Connerton, Paul. “Bodily Practices.” In: How Societies Remember.
-*Stoller, Paul. 1994. Embodying Colonial Memories. American Anthropologist 96(3): 634-648.
-*Casey, Edward. 2000. Body Memory. In: Remembering: a Phenomenological Study.
-*Lambek “The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past Through Spirit Possession”
OBJECTS OF MEMORY
-*Radley, Alan. 1990. “Artefacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past.” In Collective Remembering.
*Parkin, David. 1999. “Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Human Displacement.”
-*Ash, Juliet. 1996. “Memory and Objects” In The Gendered Object.
-*Brown, Karen Mc Carthy 1999 “Telling a Life: Race, Memory and Historical Consciousness”
SITES OF REMEMBRANCE AND COMMEMORATION
-Connerton, Paul. “Commemorative Ceremonies.” In: How Societies Remember.
-*Casey, Edward. 2000. “Place Memory.” In Remembering: a Phenomenological Study.
-*Kuchler, Susanne. The Place of Memory. In The Art of Forgetting.
-Werbner, Richard. “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Reinscription
in Zimbabwe.” In Memory and the Postcolony.
FORGETTING
-*Carsten, Janet. 1995. “The Politics of Forgetting: Migration, Kinship and Memory on the Periphery of
the Southeast Asian State.”
-*Forty, Adrian. 1999. Introduction. In The Art of Forgetting.
-*Battaglia, Deborah. 1993. “At Play in the Fields (and Borders) of the Imaginary: Melanesian
Transformations of Forgetting.”
-Trouillot Chapter 2 In Silencing the Past:
12/4 STUDENT PAPER PRESENTATIONS
12/10 FINAL PAPERS DUE
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READINGS
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http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/jsutton/Socialmemory.htm
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/201/index.html#1
-Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1989. Objects of Memory: Material Culture as Life Review. In: Elliott
Oring (ed). Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader. Pp. 329-338. Logan: Utah State University
Press.
-Shaw, Rosalind. 2001. “Spirit Memoryscapes” In Memories of the Slave Trade. Ritual and the Historical
Imagination in Sierra Leone.
-Kenny, Michael. 1996. Trauma, Time, Illness, and Culture. An Anthropological Approach to Traumatic
Memory. In: Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek (eds). Tense Past. Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory.
Pp. 151-171. London/New York: Routledge.
-White, Geoffrey 2001 “Histories and Subjectivities.” Ethos.
-Bastide, Roger. 1978. Problems of Collective Memory. In: The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a
Sociology of Interpenetration of Civilizations. Pp. 240-259.
-Dosal, Paul Che Guevara in Death, Dismemberment and Memory.
-Popular Memory Group. 1982. Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method. In: Richard Johnson et. al.
(eds). Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics. Pp. 205-52. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
- Fentress J. and C. Whickham. 1992. Social memory. New Perspectives on the Past. Oxford: Blackwell.
Read Introduction.
-E Wolf “Introduction” in Europe and the People Without History Pp 1-23
- Augé, Marc. 2004. Oblivion. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
- Baxter, Charles. 1999. Introduction. In: The Business of Memory. The Art of Remembering in an Age
of Forgetting. Pp. 141-157.
- La Capra, Dominique. 1998. Chapter 1. History and Memory: In the Shadow of the Holocaust. In:
History and Memory after Auschwitz. Pp 8-42. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Vansina, Jan. 1980. Memory and Oral Tradition. In: Miller, Joseph (ed). The African Past Speaks.
Essays in Oral Tradition and History. Pp. 262-279. Folkestone: Dawson-Archon.
- Goody, Jack. 1998. Memory in Oral Tradition. In: Fara, Patricia and Patterson, Karalyn (eds). Memory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Kenny, Michael 1999 A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History.
Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 41(3): 420-437.
- Leydesdorff, Selma, Luisa Passerini and Paula Thompson. 1996. Introduction. In: Gender and Memory.
Pp. 1-16. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Burchianti, Margaret. 2004. Building Bridges of Memory: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the
Cultural Politics of Maternal Memories. History and Anthropology 15(2): 133-150.
- Hershatter, Gail. 2002. The Gender of Memory: Rural Chinese Women and the 1950s. Signs 28(1): 43-
70.
- Ely, Richard and Allysa McCabe. 1996. Gender Differences in Memories Speech. In: Leydesdorff,
Selma, Luisa Passerini and Paula Thompson (eds). Gender and Memory. Pp. 17-30. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
-Pohlandt-McCormick, Helena 2000. "I Saw a Nightmare: Violence and the Construction of Memory”
-Bloch, Maurice. “The Resurrection of the House amongst the Zafimaniry of Madagascar.” In: How We
Think They Think.
- Strathern, Andrew. 1996. Habit or Habitus? Theories of Memory, the Body, and Change. In: Body
Thoughts. Pp. 25-39. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
-Lambek, Michael. 1998. The Sakalava Poesis of History. Realizing the Past through Sakalava Spirit
Possession. American Ethnologist 25(2): 106-127.
-Francis Doris, Leonie Kellaher and Georgina Neophytou. The Cemetery. A Site for the Construction of
Memory, Identity and Ethnicity. In: Climo Jacob and Maria Cattell (eds). Social Memory and History.
Anthropological Perspectives. Pp. 95-110. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
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-Healy, Chris. 1994. Histories and Collecting: Museums, Objects and Memories. In: Darian-Smith Kate
and Paula Hamilton (eds). Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia. Pp. 33-51. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
-Hill &Wright “Time, Narrative and Ritual: Historical Interpretations from an Amazonian Society”
-Lazzara, Michael J.
2006 Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory. Gainsville: University Press of Florida.
-Lipsitz, George
2001 Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press.
-Mallon, Florencia
2005 Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906–
2001. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
-Oakdale, Susan
2005 I Forsee My Life: The Ritual Performance of Autobiography in an Amazonian Community. Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press.
-Rappaport, Joanne
2005 Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation and Ethnic Pluralism in
Colombia. Durham and London: Duke University press.
-Rubenstein, Steven
2002 Alejandro Tsakimp: A Shuar Healer in the Margins of History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press.
-Sturken, Marita
1997 Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of remembering.
Berkeley: University of California press.
-Lipsitz, George
2001 Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press.
-White, Geoffrey 2006 “Epilogue: Memory Moments” Ethos
-Lambek, Michael
2002 The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar. Palgrave.
- Goody, Jack. 1998. Memory in Oral Tradition. In: Fara, Patricia and Patterson, Karalyn (eds). Memory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bastide, Roger. 1978. Problems of Collective Memory. In: The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a
Sociology of Interpenetration of Civilizations. Pp. 240-259. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
- Berliner, David. 2005. The Abuses of Memory. Reflections on the Memory Boom in Anthropology.
Anthropological Quarterly 78(1): 183-197.
- Vansina, Jan. 1980. Memory and Oral Tradition. In: Miller, Joseph (ed). The African Past Speaks.
Essays in Oral Tradition and History. Pp. 262-279. Folkestone: Dawson-Archon.
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