History in the Media: contesting, commemorating, resignificating
INSTRUCTORS
Carla Baptista, Paulo J. Fernandes and Pedro A. Oliveira
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course focus is to understand the key roles of media as interfaces between the history produced in academic circles and the general public, thus making the experience of the past inherently dynamic and prone to reconstructions or revisions. The course will explore the issue of how the modern media (print, digital/online or audiovisual) can function as space in which conflicting visions and claims about the past are advanced, either by institutions, organized groups or individuals. The course will allow students to situate the boom of “popular history” since the 1990s (with new protagonists disputing the ‘authoritative role’ previously held by historians) and identify some of the dominant themes in several European countries (from imperial nostalgia to forms of historical “negationism”, or the rise of post-colonial or “identity” agendas). Through a series of case-studies, students are expected to gain a better understanding of the peculiar dynamics of historical controversies, either in terms of the argumentation techniques or legitimation strategies employed, as well as acquire competencies in assessing the reliability of historical arguments.
CLASS SCHEDULE:
1. Media and History: introduction to the course
Mutual presentation of teachers and students. Teaching methodologies and evaluation criteria. The past in the Media and the Medialization of History: concepts, debates, controversies. The focus of the course: iconography (satire); history and film documentary; television, journalism and cultural heritage.
2. Religion, the politically correct and the persistence of censorship in graphic humor
Mandatory Reading:
Jenn Burleson Mackay. What Does Society Owe Political Cartoonists?, Journalism Studies, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2017: 28-44.
3. Imperial laughter: caricatures, colonialism and racism
Mandatory Reading:
Richard Scully. Mark Knight vs. Serena Williams – Crossing the Line: Offensive and .Controversial Cartoons in the 21st Century – “the view from Australia”. International Journal on Comic Art, Vol. 20, n.º 2, Fall / Winter 2018: 151-176.
4. Nationalism, satirical press and national identities (in Europe)
Mandatory Reading:
Alberto Godioli and Ana Pedrazzini. Falling stars and sinking ships. Framing and metaphor in cartoons about Brexit. Journal of European Studies, Vol. 49 (3-4), 2019: 302-323.
5&6. Cinema Verité and the Algerian Revolution: Discussion of Gilo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966).
Screening of Gilo Pontecorvo’s and The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Mandatory reading:
Bignardi, Irene, ‘The Making of the Battle of Aligiers’, Cineaste, 25 (2), 2000, pp. 14-22
Sawers, Catherine (2014). ‘The Women of Bataille d’Alger: Hearts and Minds and Bombs’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 10 ( 2), 2014, pp. 80–106
7. The mise-en-scène of Portugal’s ‘mild-mannered’ fascism: João Canijo and Fantasia Lusitana (2010).
Mandatory Reading:
Baptista, Tiago, ‘Cinema/História – o cinema como historiador do século XX português’, Revista Camões 24: 2016, pp. 47-58 [bilingual version]
Corkill, David and Almeida, José Carlos, ‘Commemoration and Propaganda in Salazar’s Portugal: The Mundo Português Exposition of 1940’. Journal of Contemporary History 44 (3): 2009, pp. 381-399.
8. The wars of the end of Empire: Britain and the Malayan ‘Emergency’ and the Angolan Revolt of 1961 on BBC (Empire Warriors, 2004) and RTP (A Guerra, 2007) documentaries.
Mandatory reading:
Hack, Karl (2012) ‘Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counterinsurgency’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 23:4-5, 2012, pp. 671-699
Oliveira, P. Aires, ‘Portuguese Decolonization in Africa’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2017. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.41
9.Media and History: multiple ways of correlation. The public historian and the historic journalist. The media constructed notion of the past and cultural heritage. The notion of deliberate heritage. The everyday contexts of heritage. Media and collective memory in globalized and digitized societies. Newsworthiness and the shaping of collective memory. Journalism as a site of “memory construction”.
Mandatory Reading:
Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels, K. L. (2019). Deliberate Heritage: Difference and Disagreement After Charlottesville, The Public Historian (2019) 41 (1): 121–132.
10. History, Memory and the Popular Representation of the Past. Case Study: Narrating the Portuguese Revolution (1974) through television.
Mandatory Reading:
Meyers, O. (2004-2005). Narrating the 1960s via The ’60s: Television’s Representation of the Past between History and Memory. Film&History CD-ROM Annual.
11. Invited artist: Luciana Fina. A talk about the Andrómeda installation
12. Invited film-maker: Joana Pontes, a talk about the film Visões do Império/ Visions of Empire (2021).
13. Political cartoons outside: a guided tour to the Bordalo Pinheiro museum
A guided tour of the permanent exhibition of the Bordalo Pinheiro Museum in Lisbon and the presentation of a conference on the life and work of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, the most important Portuguese caricaturist of the 19th century (who died in 1905), are intended to show the current and the permanent relevance of his graphic work and discuss its importance for the history of humour and satire in Portugal to the present day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OCrqcc8h2A [accessed on September 17, 2021]