Great Issues in Social Science

HSP 15        CRN
Mondays – 10:10 – Noon
Wednesdays – 10:10 – 11:00
Olin
Dr. Marcy Sacks

Description of the course:

This course examines the relationship between history and collective memory, exploring the ways that societies reinterpret, understand, and tell stories about the past. Far from being a mere restatement of “facts,” the production of history is shaped and often deliberately constructed in ways that reveal a great deal about the society being remembered and the one doing the remembering. The course material will draw from a range of sources, including theory (e.g., M.R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History); film (e.g., Remember the Titans); public art (grounded in readings like K. Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves); popular journalism (T. Horowitz, Confederates in the Attic); linguistics (J. Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity); and history (D. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory).