COLLECTIVE MEMORIES of WORLD WAR II
HST 695h, Spring 2007
Instructors: Gail Bernstein and Susan Crane
Office/Hours/Contact
Dr. Gail Bernstein, Soc Sci 125, TTH 3:30-5:00 and by appt.; glbernst@u.arizona.edu ; 621-3737
Dr. Susan Crane, Soc Sci 237A, TTH 1:00-2:00 and by appt.; scrane@u.arizona.edu ; 621-1113
Course Overview : "Collective memory" exists among people who have shared experiences and wish to remember them as groups. These groups can be as large as a nation, or as small as a family. All individuals belong to many collectives. "Collective memory" analysis conducted by historians inquires into the relations between the past and the way it is remembered. Historians ask: How do groups remember the past? How is collective memory represented at particular sites -- museums, memorials, films, books? What persists in collective memory that resists historical interpretations? With regard to World War II, the Holocaust and atomic warfare, collective memory and historical research have often appeared to be at odds. How have Germans, Japanese, Americans and others dealt with these recent traumas, and what is still unresolved?
Assignments
1) In addition to regular participation in discussion, each colloquium member is expected to introduce one week's readings and lead discussion.
2) Writing assignments:
-- 6 precis to be written during the term, due on the day of the discussion of the readings ONLY (2-3 double-spaced pages, synthesizing the week's readings according to a thematic concern chosen by you); one precis must accompany each week of discussion leadership
-- one 10-page paper, due May 4,. This should addresses a collective memory topic in depth, based on student interest and the assigned and supplementary readings. Please discuss the topic with an instructor at least two weeks prior to the due date.
Readings Key
* = required reading available in the history office file drawer in Soc Sci 217 or online .
$ = required reading available at the bookstore AND on reserve at the library: Laura Hein and Mark Selden, Living with the Bomb [also available through Sabio as an electronic file] ; James Young, Texture of Memory
All videos are on reserve at the Main Library. Supplementary readings are optional.
Class Meetings
Jan. 22: Introduction
Read: Sebastian Conrad, "Entangled Memories" Journal of Contemporary History 38:1 (2003), 85-99 -- online
Jan. 29: Remembering The Bomb
View: "The World at War": " Japan 1941-45" and "The Bomb" (2 episodes), and ABC News, " Hiroshima : Why the Bomb Was Dropped" (1995)
Read: * Edward Linenthal, "Anatomy of a Controversy" in Linenthal, ed. History Wars (1996)
*Susan A. Crane, "Memory, Distortion and History in the Museum" History and Theory theme issue 36 (1997)
Supplementary:
"History and the Public: What Can We Handle?" theme issue, Journal of American History 82:3 (December 1995) -- documents of Enola Gay controversy
G. Hicks, Japan 's War Memories
Feb. 5: Hiroshima , Nagasaki : Memory in Japan
Visit: USS Arizona memorial and Alumni Lounge in Memorial Student Union
Read: $Hein and Selden, Living with the Bomb , chs. 1-3, 7-9
Supplementary:
Michael Hogan, ed., Hiroshima in History and Memory (1996), esp. Dower article
Feb. 12: Collective Memory Theory
Read:* Maurice Halbwachs, "Historical Memory and Collective Memory" in Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (1980)
*Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History" and "Generation," in Nora, ed. The Realms of Memory (1996 v. 1)
*Patrick Hutton, "Maurice Halbwachs as Historian of Collective Memory" in Hutton, History as an Art of Memor y (1993)
Supplementary: I Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (1994) -- see annotated bibliography
Feb. 19: War and Guilt I
Read: * H. D. Harootunian, "Memory, Mourning and National Morality: Yasukuni Shrine" in P. van der Veer and H. Lehmann, eds., Nation and Religion (1999)
*Norma Field, "The Mayor" in Field, In the Realm of the Dying Emperor (1991)
*Yoshikuni Igarashi, "The Bomb, Hirohito and History" in Igarashi, Bodies of Memory (2000)
*Onuma Yasuaki, "The Tokyo War Crimes Trial" in F. Li, et al, Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing (2002)
Supplementary:
John Dower, Embracing Defeat (1999)
Karl Jaspers, The Question of Guilt (1948)
Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (2000)
Feb. 26: War and Guilt II
Read: *Theodore Adorno, "Coming to Terms with the Past" in G. Hartman, Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (1986)
*Michael Geyer, "The Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany " in Joan Copjec, ed. Radical Evil (1996)
*Michael Geyer and Miriam Hansen, "German-Jewish Memory and National Consciousness", in G. Hartman, Holocaust Remembrance (1994)
Robert Moeller, "What Has 'Coming to Terms with the Past' Meant in Post-World War II Germany? From History to Memory to the 'History of Memory'" Central European History , 35:1 (2002) -- online
Supplementary:
Konrad Jarausch and Micheal Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (2003)
Robert Moeller, War Stories (2001)
W. Sebald, The Natural History of Destruction (2002)
March 5: Divided Memories Before and After 1990
Read: *James Young, " Germany 's Holocaust Memorial Problem" in Young, At Memory's Edge (2000)
*Alf Luedtke, "'Coming to Terms with the Past': Illusions of Remembering, Ways of Forgetting Nazism in West Germany " Journal of Modern History , 65 (September 1993)
*Claudia Koonz, "Between Memory and Oblivion" in J. Gillis, ed., Commemorations (1994)
Supplementary:
*Elizabeth Domansky, "Kristallnacht, the Holocaust and German Unity" History and Memory 4:1 (Spring-Summer 1992)
Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past (2002)
Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory (1997)
Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (2000)
**Spring Break**
March 19: The Holocaust as Memory and Memorial
View: "After Auschwitz: Battle for the Holocaust" (Paul Yule, 2001)
Read : $James Young, Texture of Memory , chs. 1-3, 5
*Harold Marcuse, "The Revival of Holocaust Awareness in West Germany, Israel and America" in C. Fink et al, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (1998)
*Saul Friedlander, "The Shoah in Historical Consciousness" in Friedlander, History, Memory and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (1993)
Supplementary:
Saul Friedlander, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation (1992)
Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz (1998)
March 26: Photography and War Crimes
View: Ruth Beckermann, "East of War"
Read:* Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget , ch. 5-7
* Dagmar Barnouw , Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence (1996), ch. 1-2
*B. Niven, "The Crimes of the Wehrmacht" in Niven, Facing the Nazi Past (2002)
$Hein and Selden , Living with the Bomb , ch 4
Look at: Hamburg Institute for Social Research, eds., The German Army and Genocide (1999)
Supplementary: Janina Struk, Photographing the Holocaust (2005)
Tessa Morriss Suzuki, "Shadow on the Lens" in her The Past Within Us (2005)
April 2: Photography (In)Visible Memories
View: Rea Tajiri, "History and Memory" (1991)
Read: * Marianne Hirsch, "Surviving Images" in Barbie Zelizer, ed., Visual Culture and the Holocaust (2001)
* Martia Sturken, "Absent Images of Memory: Remembering and Reenacting the Japanese Internment" in G. White and L. Yoneyama, Perilous Memories (2001)
*Julia A. Thomas, "Photography, National Identity and the 'Cataract of Times'" American Historical Review 103:5 (December 1998)
$Hein and Selden , Living with the Bomb , ch. 6
Supplementary: Dorothea Lange , Impounded : Dorothea Lange and the censored images of Japanese American internment (2006)
April 9: Teaching Controversial Memories: Nanking 1937
Read: *Nozaki and Inokuchi, "Japanese Education, Nationalism and Ienaga Saburo's Textbook Lawsuits" and *G. McCormack, "The Japanese Movement to 'Correct' History" in Hein and Selden, Censoring History (2000)
*Arif Dirlik, "Trapped in History on the Way to Utopia" in Fujitani, et al, eds., Perilous Memories (2001)
*Kasahara Tokushi, "Remembering the Nanking Massacre" and Takashi Yoshida, "Refighting the Nanking Massacre" in Fei Fei Li, et al, Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing (2002)
Supplementary:
Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan , China and the United States (2006)
Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (2000)
April 16: Teaching Controversial Memories: "Comfort Women"
View: Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, "Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women"
Read: Hyun Sook Kim, "History and Memory: The 'Comfort Women' Controversy" Positions 5:1 (1997) -- online
*Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, "The Film within the Film" in M. Stetz and B. Oh, Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II (2001)
Ueno Chizuko, "The Politics of Memory", translated and introduced by Jordan Sand, History and Memory 11:2 (Fall/Winter 1999), pp. 117-152 -- online
Supplementary:
Positions: Special Issue on the Comfort Women 5:1 (Spring 1997)
April 23: Victimologies
Read: *Robert Moeller, "War Stories" American Historical Review 101:4 (October 1996)
*Atina Grossman, "A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers" in R. Moeller , West Germany under Construction (1997)
* Jan Gross, "A Tangled Web" in Deak, Gross and Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe (2000)
Supplementary:
Jan Gross, Neighbors (2002)
Anthony Polansky and Joanna Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond (2004)
April 30: Vichy Syndromes: France and Austria
Read: *Jan Gross, "Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration" in Deak, Gross and Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe (2000)
*P. Burrin, " Vichy " in Nora, ed. The Realms of Memory (1997)
*Heidemarie Uhl, "From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis: Nazi Rule, World War II, and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory" AND *Richard Goslan, "The Legacy of World War II in France : Mapping the Discourses of Memory" in Lebow, et al, eds., The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (2006)
$James Young, The Texture of Memory , ch. 4
Recommended viewing : Marchel Ophuls, "The Sorrow and the Pity" (1972)
Supplementary:
Joan B. Wolf, Harnessing the Holocaust: The Politics of Memory in France (2004)
H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome (1991) and The Haunting Past (2002)