Media, Memory, and History

Transcription

1 New York University Media, Culture, and Communication Spring 2016 MCC-GE 2135 WAVE 435 (24 Waverly Place) Tues 2-4:10 Professor Marita Sturken Media, Culture, and Communication 239 Greene Street 8 th Fl marita.sturken@nyu.edu tel: Office hours: Th 11-12:30 and by appt Media, Memory, and History Course description: Visual culture and memory studies have emerged over the last few decades as interdisciplinary, transnational fields of study in which vital scholarship is being produced. While memory studies originated in literary studies and history, it now crosses such fields and disciplines as anthropology, art and design, media studies, and sociology. The study of visual culture emerged out of an expansion of art history, yet is now fully realized at the intersections of art, media, and design. These fields intersect in important ways, drawing on Holocaust studies, trauma studies, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and architecture/design with visuality and images playing a key role in memory culture and memory playing a key role in the realm of images and visuality. While the culture of memory has its origins in national meaning, theories and aesthetics of memory are transnational and circulate globally. Visual culture studies is also increasingly global in its reach, as visual culture defines a global context of image circulation, digital media, viral networks, and virtual worlds. This course examines theories of memory in relation to global visual culture, looking in particular at the intersections of memory with media forms such as film and television, photography, art, architecture, and design. We will look at the foundational concepts of cultural memory and at technologies of memory, critical visuality, artistic engagements with memory, and memory s remediation in digital media. The course will address questions such as: What role has the photograph played in concepts of modern history? How are historical narratives told through the media of film and television? What issues are raised by the form of the historical docudrama? How is cultural memory produced and circulated through television and film and photography? What is the difference between history and cultural memory? How cultural memory experienced through aesthetics, how artists are engaging with memory, and the interrelationship of media forms with the politics of memory will be our primary focuses.

2 2 Course Requirements: Students are required to attend all seminars, to undertake the reading assignments seriously, and to participate fully in seminar discussions. Readings will be prioritized each week. Each week 3-4 students will be assigned to bring questions to class for discussion. Students will do either (1) a short paper every two weeks on a topic related to the course material for a total of 5 short papers, or (2) one short paper mid-semester of 5-7 pages, and one more in-depth research paper. There will also be occasional short assignments. Grades will consider class participation and short assignments 10% and (1) 4 short papers of 15% each and the last short paper 30%, or (2) paper 1 30%, paper 2 60%. Required Texts: Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus (Pantheon, 1996) Alison Bechtel, Fun Home (Mariner, 2006) All other readings are posted in pdf on NYU Classes. Week 1 January 26 Introduction Week 2 February 2 Theorizing Memory Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History (excerpt) Sigmund Freud, A Note Upon the Mystic Writing Pad (excerpt) Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (excerpt) Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories, Introduction Bill Schwarz, Memory, Temporality, Modernity (excerpt) Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch, Phantom Flashbulbs Week 3 February 9 The City as Memory: Field Trip to High Line Guest Lecture: Dana Polan Edward Dimendberg, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (excerpts) The High Line, Interview with architects Hal Foster, Postmodernist Machines Juhani Pallasmaa, Space, Place, Memory and Imagination

3 3 Week 4 February 16 Modernity and Colonial Visuality Anne Friedberg, The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity Ben Singer, Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism Vanessa Schwartz, Public Visits to the Morgue Wolfgang Schivelbush, Panoramic Travel (excerpt) Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look (Introduction and Chapter 1) Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies (Introduction and Chapter 2) Week 5 February 23 Photography and Memory Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (excerpts) Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories, Chapter 1 Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames, Introduction Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not (excerpt) Allan Sekula, The Body and the Archive Week 6 March 1 Postmemory and Family Photography Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, Introduction and Chapter 1 Marianne Hirsch, Past Lives from Family Frames Leo Spitzer, The Album and the Crossing Marcelo Brodsky, Buena Memoria Week 7 March 8 Memory and Mass Culture Susannah Radstone, Cinema and Memory Andrew Hoskins, Television and the Collapse of Memory Alison Landsberg, Introduction to Prosthetic Memory Alison Landsberg, Engaging the Past: Introduction and Chapter 1 Annette Kuhn, Dreaming of Fred and Ginger: Cinema and Cultural Memory (excerpt) Janet Walker, Catastrophe, Representation, and the Vicissitudes of Memory Spring Break

4 4 Week 8 March 22 Image Icons and Docudrama Hayden White, The Modernist Event Robert Harriman and John Lucaites, No Caption Needed (excerpt) Marianne Hirsch, Surviving Images Marita Sturken, Tourists of History, chapter 4 Marita Sturken, Reenactment, Fantasy and the Paranoia of History Miriam Hansen, Schindler s List is not Shoah Week 9 March 29 The Politics of Memorials Marita Sturken, The Wall, The Screen, and the Image James Young, Memory, Countermemory, and the End of Monument and Memory Against Itself Katherine Hite, Politics and the Art of Commemoration (excerpt) Shelly Hornstein, Memorializing Site William Hirst, et al., A Ten Year Followup for a Study of Memory of September 11, 2001 Field Trip to 9/11 Memorial and Museum Week 10 April 5 Architecture, The Global Museum and the Memory Museum Shelly Hornstein, Curating Site Marita Sturken, The Objects that Lived Saloni Mathur, Museums and Globalization Andreas Huyssen, The Voids of Berlin Orphan Pamuk, The Innocence of Objects Terry Smith, The Architecture of Aftermath (excerpts)

5 5 Week 11 April 12 The Historical Graphic Novel, the Historical Musical, and Questions of Representation Art Spiegelman, The Complete Maus Alison Bechtel, Fun Home Hillary Chute and Art Spiegelman, Why Comics? from MetaMaus Articles on Hamilton and Fun Home Week 12 April 19 Nostalgia/Irony/Postmodernity Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (excerpt) Mieke Bal, Of What One Cannot Speak (excerpt) Ernst van Alphen, Staging the Archive: Intro and Chapter 6: Depletion Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, excerpts Judith Butler, Precarious Life, Chapter 2: Violence, Mourning, Politics Week 13 April 26 Remediation: Digital Media and Repackaging History Andrew Hoskins, 7/7 and Connective Memory Ann Reading, The London Bombings: Mobile Witnessing Jose van Dijk, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age (excerpt) Alison Trope, Stardust Memories: Hollywood in a Box Marita Sturken, Kodak, Polaroid and Facebook: The Shaping of Memory, Family Pictures, and Photographs of the Self Anne Friedberg, Virtual Windows, Introduction Week 14 May 3 Memory Commodity, Tourism, and Performance Cheryl Finley Authenticating Dungeons, Whitewashing Castles: The Former Sites of Slave Trade on the Ghanian Coast Marita Sturken, Pilgrimages, Reenactment, and Souvenirs Diana Taylor, Trauma as Durational Performance Laurie Beth Clark, Ethical Spaces: Ethics and Propriety in Trauma Tourism Brigitte Sion, Introduction to Death Tourism and Conflicting Sites of Memory