Universität Wien

090089 VO Trauma, Oblivion, Memory: Theory and Case Studies (2023S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 9 - Altertumswissenschaften
Moodle

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Details

Language: English

Examination dates

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Monday 06.03. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 20.03. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 27.03. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 24.04. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 08.05. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 15.05. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 22.05. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 05.06. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 12.06. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock
  • Monday 19.06. 10:45 - 12:15 Hörsaal d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postgasse 9, 2.Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Preoccupation with memory and the past has taken on such dimensions during the last decades that scholars talk of a “memory boom” in literary and cultural studies. This course will guide students through this theoretical discourse on memory and will try to account for its current flourishing. We will draw on thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Jan and Aleida Assmann, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, G.W.F. Hegel, Marianne Hirsch, Pierre Nora, Aby Warburg, and discuss notions that include “afterlife”, collective and cultural memory, forgetting, lieux de mémoire, materiality and memory, tradition, post-memory, hauntology. Our special emphasis will be on memory and trauma, either individual or collective, which we will place in the psychoanalytic theoretical frame that emphasizes trauma’s inherent links to forgetfulness, latency, belatedness. We will also look at literary representations of trauma, drawing in the discussion examples of Modern Greek literature in a comparative frame. Traumatic accounts of the Asia Minor Disaster (1922) and the Greek civil war (1946-1949) in both poetry and prose will be brought in the theoretical perspective outlined throughout the course.
Teaching method combines lecture and discussion with the students. All texts we will discuss will be uploaded on the eclass in advance of our meetings.

Assessment and permitted materials

Mode of evaluation: final exam. The exam is written, in person, and involves open questions.
In addition, students are strongly encouraged to study materials in advance of each meeting and participate in class discussions.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

Reading list

Assmann, A. 2011. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions. Media, Archives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Berger, S., and B. Niven (eds) 2014. Writing the History of Memory (London: Bloomsbury)
Bond, L., and J. Rapson (eds) 2014. The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders (Berlin: De Gruyter).
Caruth, C. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University
Press).
Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Erll, A. and A. Nünning (eds) 2010. A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies (Berlin: De Gruyter)
Felman, S. and Laub, D. (1992) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York and London: Routledge)
Halbwachs, M. 1980 [1950]. The Collective Memory, trans. F.J. Ditter Jr and V. Yazdi Ditter
(New York: Harper Colophon)
Hirsch, M. (2012) The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press).
Ricoeur, P. 2007. Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press)

Additional materials, as well as the Greek texts in English translation, will be uploaded on the eclass

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Mo 18.09.2023 14:07