79-740 Memory, History, and Archive
12 units, Carnegie Mellon University
This course explores the varied relationships between memory, history, and archives. It focuses in particular on the roles that memory and history play in the construction and transformation of political entities like states and nations, and social identities like those of class, gender, and race. After a series of readings on the cognitive psychology of memory, and on the concepts of collective memory, social memory, and cultural memory, we will move on to a similarly broad set of readings addressing the politics of historical memory, and memorialization, in connection with experiences of violence and trauma. Finally, we will consider the often troubled relationship between history, memory, and forgetting, and will discuss work by historians and anthropologists who have explored archives themselvesincluding those that take digital formas institutions whose nature and construction bring into view the profound cultural and political relevance of memory, and history, in the making and unmaking of collective entities and identities. Throughout, the approach of this course will be multidisciplinary, drawing upon perspectives from history, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and literary and cultural studies.
Prerequisites: none listed
Offered: Spring 2027
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