This course considers how we remember and make sense of “difficult pasts”– historical events where there is little consensus about the meaning of the events, or pride in the events themselves. Difficult pasts might include the legacy of slavery in the US, movements for White/Christian supremacy that were pervasive in the 1930s, and even the Vietnam War or the AIDS crisis. There have been battles about whether and how to remember these events. In this country, remembering the Holocaust is widely seen as important and necessary, but in some nations, such as Poland, commemorating the genocide of Europe’s Jews have been a source of political conflict. When and where is little consensus on the meaning of historical events, memorializing those events can be fraught and highly contested.
We remember by constructing stories about events and experiences. But what, when, and how are stories told? What is remembered, and what is forgotten? How do stories get transmitted over space and time? Why are survivors often unable or unwilling to acknowledge or speak about them? How have medical professionals, government officials and social movements responded to them? How does membership in different groups (religious, ethnic, national, gender) shape the ways people remember, forget, and deny the past? In this course we will examine the social conditions and factors through which memories take shape and how even the most personal memories are embedded in social contexts.
We’ll draw on different case studies to examine whose stories are told, and whose stories are left out of collective memory; how intergenerational transmission of memory takes place; whether it is possible to recover lost memories; how media frames events; and reflect on questions of accountability and justice for violent pasts. The course will feature lectures, discussions, films, and possibly a guest speaker or two, and include readings by sociologists, historians, psychologists, political scientists and literary critics.
About Arlene Stein
Arlene Stein’s research focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, culture, and politics. The author or editor of nine books, she received the American Sociological Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities. She teaches courses on the sociology of gender and sexuality, culture, self and society, and trauma/memory, and writing within and beyond academia. She is the director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers and serves on the graduate faculty of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.