Historical Politics: Debating the Twentieth Century 2022/23 Fall
INSTRUCTOR
Péter Apor
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course explores the politics of history in the communist era and beyond in Central and Eastern Europe. The course focuses on the variety of ways history was approached and represented in the region between the end of World War II and the fall of the communist dictatorships. It scrutinizes the constant attempts to rewrite and revise historical narratives, rearrange exhibitions and reset monuments. To this end, the course investigates various primary and secondary sources related to the representations of the past, mainly museums, monuments, documentaries, artworks, political statements, and academic works. Special attention will be paid to the political uses of history and memory in nation-building and state legitimacy, two key aspects to understand broader political cultures in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.
The course approaches these themes in a longer term historical perspective and a comparative framework. It investigates the bewildering variety of the uses of the past in Central and Eastern Europe and sets the emphasis on elucidating the heterogeneity of historical cultures in the region. It explores the broader European context of the politics of history following WWII and puts special emphasis on ways of making sense of the experiences of occupation and the war. Further, the course pays special attention to the legacies of communist politics of history and its revisions after 1989 and investigates the main trends and paradigms of postcommunist politics of history and memory.
The course focuses on the patterns of historical scholarship, museum policies and memory politics in the communist period. It investigates the main themes of historical revisionism in the region, for instance, the writing and re-writing the history of 1956 in Hungary or WWII in Poland. It explores how postcommunist societies developed ways of tackling their recent dictatorial pasts in statue parks, museums of communism and WWII and lustration laws. It introduces the main actors, institutions, groups and fora of the politics of history. The course highlights the main themes of postcommunist memory making, particularly, remembering collaboration with the auhtorities and dissent or counter-cultures. Special emphasis will be paid to relevant recent developments, particularly, the emergence of transnational networks that intend to shape the representations of communism and the war as well as the increasing use of digital and audio-visual means in bringing historical experiences close to audiences.
To this end, the course is based on an intensive use of visual material. It introduces the use of various online platforms that collect the institutions, groups and persons who are instrumental in shaping the politics of history in Central and Eastern Europe. The course encourages the use of visual material, such as artworks, documentaries and photographs available on these collections. Further, field trips to important sites of memory in the region are planned.
The ultimate objective of the course is to engage students in a general discussion about the politics of memory in contemporary Europe. Using the particularly sensitive cases in Central and Eastern Europe, students will be stimulated to reflect on the ways historical politics shapes historical memories in a variety of social and cultural settings. Students will be encouraged to identify strategies of manipulating historical narratives and evidence and to understand the intentions and motivations of various actors shaping the politics of history. They will be stimulated to develop techniques of public representations of history that pay attention to the needs of communities, pay respect to the memory of the victims and to historical evidence.
LIST OF CLASSES
Framing the Communist Past in Central and Eastern Europe
Confronting the Memory of Dictatorships in Europe
Remembering Occupation: France and Poland
Writing History in Communist Eastern Europe
Communism and Museums
Revisionism
Paradigms of Post-Communist Memory
Memory of Collaboration and Dissent
A Memory of Justice?
Debates on the Recent Past in Transnational Spaces
History and Memory in the Digital Age
Conclusions. Authenticity and the Representation of the Past