AMERICAN MEMORY

Historiographically speaking this course is a study of the complex processes that evolve social memory and shape various (often deeply contested) historical narratives.  Practically speaking, this course is a study of objects (“scraps” and “fragments”) that “fix” history within the matrices of particular technologies (manuscripts, books, photographs, recorded sound and moving image) at a particular moment in time and amid a variety of historical contexts (most of which quickly become invisible to posterity).  Our challenge, really the challenge for all researchers, is to reconcile the process by which fixed history is evolved into both memory and narrative.

But, first, we distinguish “American Memory” from “American History.”  To begin, I suggest that history is memory codified and placed within a particular narrative (generally the final product is a published volume).  We need to consider, however, that Americans are exceptionally good at democratizing technologies of memory: Thomas Edison (recorded sound, moving image), Polaroid, and Steve Jobs (I-phone) revolutionized how (and by whom) memory is captured and shared.  I suggest, that such a collective history of memory making has created massive new opportunities to expand upon and revaluate the boundaries of “American History.” 

Within this critical context we will then engage the complex contestations of history that are shaping American culture today.  Does America have a national origin story?  Across American history how have the experiences of Native Americans been remembered, forgotten, and (re)remembered?  What is “The Lost Cause” and how can a narrative composed in 1865 still be tearing at the very fabric of American society?  What is “the West”?  Could the advances in Civil Rights (broadly conceived) that we associate with post World War II America have been possible without the documentation and preservation of the memories of marginalized populations from before World War II (this includes focused study of the WPA during the 1930s as well as the phenomena of “America’s documentary aesthetic.”  More recently, we will consider the connection between the processes of memorializing the Aids epidemic (the famous Aids Memorial Quilt) and the rapid acceleration of LGBTQ+ rights in America.