Cultural Studies 362/562: Memory Studies

Spring 2010
Tuesday 10:40-13:30/FASS G043
Instructor: Leyla Neyzi
Office Hours: by appointment
Office: FASS 2137 Ext. 9243 neyzi@sabanciuniv.edu

Course Description
In recent decades, memory has become one of the most widely debated issues in
academia as well as in public culture. How do we account for the seduction of the past in
the global era? This course will attempt to pose answers to this question. Beginning with
a discussion of the history of the concept of memory and a brief foray into the “science”
of memory, we will analyze how three major fields have dealt with memory:
psychoanalysis, sociology and history. We will then proceed to study memory through
the prism of a number of relevant themes: the nation-state, identity, gender, space/place,
commemoration, media, and rights. The class will include guest speakers and the viewing
of films. The papers for the class will be based on a class research project.

Course Requirements and Grading

This course is a seminar. Your success depends on coming to class, doing the readings,
and participating in discussion. You are to post on SUcourse by classtime on Tuesday a
response to the readings for each week. The response should be no longer than a
paragraph and raise questions for discussion. Avoid summarizing the readings. 8
responses are required; late responses are not accepted. Grades are based on attendance
and participation (25%), response papers (30%), and a paper (45%).

Feb 16: Introduction

Proust, Marcel. 1996. In Search of Lost Time I: Swann’s Way. London: Vintage. Pp. 1-9.

Rossington, Michael and Anne Whitehead, eds. 2007. Theories of Memory: A Reader.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pp. 1-16.

Connerton, Paul. 2008. “Seven Types of Forgetting.” Memory Studies 1(1):59-71.

Feb 23: The History of Memory

Misztal, Barbara. 2003. Theories of Social Remembering. Maidenhead, Berkshire,
England: Open University Press. Chapter 2.

March 2: The “Science” of Memory

Roediger, Henry III, Yadin Dudai, Susan Fitzpatrick. 2007. Science of Memory:
Concepts. Oxford: University of Oxford Press. Pp. 11-21, 35, 53, 64-68, 75, 99, 121, 145,
165, 191, 207-213, 221-224, 231, 237-241, 243-246, 247-252, 253, 283, 315-319, 321-
324, 329-335, 365, 377-381.

March 9: Memory and Psychoanalysis

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Freud, Sigmund. 1962. “Screen Memories.” In The Standard Editing of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press. Pp. 302-322.

Rossington, Michael and Anne Whitehead, eds. 2007. Theories of Memory: A Reader.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pp. 199-205.

Sturken, Marita. 1999. “Narratives of Recovery: Repressed Memory as Cultural

Memory.” In Bal, Mieke et. al., Acts of Memory. Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England.

Kansteiner, Wulf. 2004. “Testing the Limits of Trauma: The Long-Term Psychological
Effects of the Holocaust on Individuals and Collectives.” History of the Human Sciences
17(2/3):97-123.

March 16: Memory and Sociology

Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Pp. 37-53, 193-235.

Assmann, Jan. 1995. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique
65:125-134.

Schwartz, Barry and Howard Schuman. 2005. “History, Commemoration, and Belief:
Abraham Lincoln in American Memory: 1945-2001.” American Sociological Review
70:183-203.

March 23: Memory and History

Nora, Pierre. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire.”
Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7-25.

Allan Megill. 1998. “History, Memory, Identity.” History of the Human Sciences 11(3):
37-62.

Carolyn Steedman. 2001. “The Space of Memory: In an Archive.” In Dust. Manchester:

Manchester University Press. Pp. 66-88.

Ahıska, Meltem. 2006. “Occidentalism and Registers of Truth: The Politics of Archives
in Turkey.” New Perspectives on Turkey 34:9-29.

March 30: Memory and the Nation-State

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. (Excerpts pp. 242-
252 in Rossington and Whitehead, Theories of Memory: A Reader.)

Matsuda, Matt. 1996. “Distances: In the Revolutionary Garden.” In The Memory of the
Modern. London: Oxford. Pp. 143-163.

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Zamponi, Simonetta Falasca. 2003. “Of Storytellers and Master Narratives: Modernity,
Memory, and History in Fascist Italy.” In Jeffrey Olick, ed. States of Memory. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press. Pp. 43-71.

Sant Cassia, Paul. 2005. Bodies of Evidence: Burial, Memory and the Recovery of
Missing Persons in Cyprus. Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 70-93.

April 6: The Politics of Memory: Contestation and Identity

Cenarro, Angela. 2002. “Memory beyond the Public Sphere: The Francoist Repression
Remembered in Aragon.” History and Memory 14(1/2): 165-176.

Allan, Diana. 2007. “The Politics of Witness: Remembering and Forgetting 1948 in
Shatila Camp.” In Ahmad Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and
the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 252-282.

Biner, Özlem. 2007. “Retrieving the Dignity of a Cosmopolitan City.” New Perspectives
on Turkey 37:31-58.

April 13: Memory and Gender

Sayigh, Rosemary. 2007. “Women’s Nakba Stories.” In Ahmad Sa’di and Lila Abu-
Lughod, eds. 2007. Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and the Claims of Memory. New York:
Columbia University Press. Pp. 134-158.

Das, Veena. 2000. “The Act of Witnessing: Violence, Poisonous Knowledge, and
Subjectivity.” In Veena Das et al. eds. Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of
California Press. Pp. 205-225.

Warren, Kay. 2007. “Writing Gendered Memories of Repression in Northern Ireland:

Begona Aretxaga at the Doors of the Prison.” Anthropological Theory 7(1):9-35.

April 27: Memory and Space/Place

Hebbert, Michael. 2005. “The Street as Locus of Collective Memory.” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 23:581-596.

Kusno, Abidin. 2003 “Remembering/Forgetting the May Riots.” Public Culture

15(1):149-177.

Riano-Alcala, Pilar. 2006. Dwellers of Memory: Youth and Violence in Medellin,

Colombia. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Pp. 65-100.

Ayman, Zehra. 2006. “Bellek Mekanı Olarak Sınır ve Ötekilik: Kars Şehri.” Toplum ve
Bilim 107:164-184.

May 4: Memory, Commemoration, Nostalgia

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Young, James. 1993. The Texture of Memory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
(excerpt in Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead, eds. Theories of Memory: A
Reader. Pp. 177-184.)

Sant Cassia, Paul. 2005. Bodies of Evidence: Burial, Memory and the Recovery of
Missing Persons in Cyprus. Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 94-130.

Edkins, Jenny. 2003. “The Rush to Memory and the Rhetoric of War.” Journal of
Political and Military Sociology 31(2):231-250.

Pickering, Michael and Emily Keightley. 2006. “The Modalities of Nostalgia.” Current
Sociology 54(6):919-941.

May 11: Memory and Media

Sturken, Marita 2007. “Memory, Consumerism and Media: Reflections on the
Emergence of the Field.” Memory Studies 1(1):73-78.

Matsuda, Matt. 1996. “Spectacles: Machineries of Magic.” In The Memory of the

Modern. London: Oxford. Pp. 165-183.

Bennett, Jill. 2005. Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art. Stanford:
Stanford University Press. Pp. 103-123.

Sant Cassia, Paul. Bodies of Evidence. Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 131-152.

Kansteiner, Wolf. 2002. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of

Collective Memory Studies.” History and Theory 41: 190-197.

May 18: Memory, Responsibility, Rights

Dower, John. 2002. “An Aptitude for Being Unloved: War and Memory in Japan.” In
Omer Bartov et al. eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century. New
York: The New Press. Pp. 217-240.

Esmeir, Samera. 2007. “Memories of Conquest: Witnessing Death in Tantura.” In Ahmad

Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. 2007. Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and the Claims of
Memory. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 228-250.

Asad, Talal. 2000. “What do Human Rights Do? An Anthropological Inquiry.” Theory
and Event 4(4).

May 25: Classs presentations

Radstone, Susannah. 2008. “Memory Studies: For and Against.” Memory Studies
1(1):31-39.

Papers due Monday, June 14.