Narrating Memory, History and Place

Semester and Year	SP 2011
Course Number	IDSEM-UG1568
Section	001
Instructor	Marie Cruz Soto
Days	Mon,Wed
Time	2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement	HUM, GLOBAL

Notes/Restrictions

Formerly titled "Narrating the Americas: History and Film."

Description

This course examines how people imagine a place of their own through narrations of the past. The past, after all, is a contested terrain open to divergent interpretations that shape common understandings of places. The meanings bestowed on places dictate who can use them, and how. Thus, the ways through which people narrate the past can transform places. This course, therefore, explores the broad interplay between narrations of memory, history and place. It focuses, however, on the politics of historical narrations in struggles of disempowered communities to claim a place of their own. Course readings include literary and other scholarly texts like Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past and Michel De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life as well as writings by Edward Said, William Cronon, Diana Taylor, Steven Hoelscher and Doreen Massey.

Course Type

Interdisciplinary Seminars (IDSEM-UG)