Prof. Daryle Williams
Department of History
2135 Francis Scott Key Hall
(301) 405-0061
daryle@umd.edu
http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/DWilliams
Office Hours: M 2:00-4:00pm and by appointment

Course Description

HIST 419W/619L proposes an interdisciplinary, comparative, and multimedia approach to the question of historical memory in the modern world. The weekly readings and discussions will consider the ways in which the past is recorded, invented, commemorated, and contested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Recurrent themes will include the distinctions between collective and individual memory; the relationship between historical scholarship and popular memory; memory and nationalism; "history wars," "culture wars" and other battles for the past; museums and memory; the relationship between memory and identity; and memory and power.

Course Organization

The course meets once a week for two hours. Late in the semester, we will make a site visit to the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, DC. Time permitting, we will also visit the National Museum of American History.
 

Course Requirements

All students will be expected to be active participants in the weekly discussions. Each week, one participant will lead a group discussion of the assigned reading(s), and another will serve as the session's recorder.

Each student will be required to write a major paper. Seminar participants will have the option of writing a historiographic essay on a specific problem related to the politics of memory, a theoretical exploration of the question of memory in contemporary historical studies, or a research paper based upon original research. The paper length will vary by topic and scope, but suggested lengths are 15 pages for HIST 419W and 20-25 pages for HIST 619L.

There will be no examinations.

Readings

Most assigned books are available for purchase through the University Book Center. All books still in print can be purchased through the online vendor of your choice. Used books can be purchased through such online vendors as powells.com and abebooks.com.

Some assigned articles, as indicated, are available free of charge through JSTOR. Visit http://www.jstor.org/jstor/ from any campus networked computer. Remote access to JSTOR must be authenticated via MdUSA.

The Reserve Room in McKeldin Library has been asked to place all assigned readings on reserve.

"AHR Forum: History and Memory," American Historical Review 102:5 (December 1997), pp. 1372-1412.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections Upon the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Second Edition. London: Verso, 1983.

Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau, and Steven Miller, eds. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation. Washington: The New Press, 1998.

Crane, Susan A., ed. Museums and Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Garcia-Canclini, Néstor. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1989], 1995.

Gillis, John, ed. Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. Francis J. Ditter and Vida Yazdi Ditter, trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1980, pp. 50-87

__________. On Collective Memory. Lewis A. Coser, ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 1992.

Herf, Jeffrey. Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Kammen, Michael. The Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. New York: Vintage, 1993.

Karp, Ivan and Steven D. Lavine, eds. Exhibiting Cultures: The Politics and Poetics of Museum Display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Le Goff, Jacques. History and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Linenthal, Edward and Tom Engelheart, eds. History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past. Henry Holt, 1996.

__________. Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum. New York: Viking, 1995.

Mallon, Florencia. "The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives from Latin American History," The American Historical Review, 99: 5. (December 1994), pp. 1491-1515. [JSTOR]

Nora, Pierre, ed. Realms of Memory. Vol 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Rappaport, Joanne. The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes. Durham: Duke University Press, [1990] 1998.

Ruffins, Faith Davis, "Culture Wars Won and Lost, Part II: The National African-American Museum Project," Radical History Review, 70 (1998), pp. 78-101.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves : Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

"Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory," Representations, 26 (Spring 1989). [JSTOR]

Williams, Daryle. Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Yetman, Norman., "The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection," American Quarterly, 19:13 (Autumn 1967), pp. 534-553. [JSTOR]

__________, "Ex-Slave Narratives and the Historiography of Slavery," American Quarterly, 36:2 (Summer 1984), pp. 181-210. [JSTOR]

Young, James. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
 

HIST 419W/619L is a combined undergraduate and graduate course. The readings assignments and responsibilities for presentations will be shared by all seminar participants. Grading criteria for the final paper will be differ according to level.

Your final grade will be determined by the following formula:

20% Participation
20% Oral Presentation
60% Final Paper

Statement of Academic Integrity

Essential to the fundamental purpose of the University is the commitment to principles of truth and academic honesty. Because academic dishonesty, which refers to cheating, plagiarism, or helping someone else to cheat or commit plagiarism, jeopardizes the quality of education and depreciates the genuine achievement of others it must be reported to the Honor Council.

The Code of Academic Integrity guides this and all other courses taught at the University of Maryland. Violations may result in a failing grade and/or referral to a University disciplinary committee. The full text of the Code is available through the Office of Judicial Programs.