First Year Seminar 105 - History and Memory in America

"The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only photographs." Susan Sontag

Americans are at war over history. While scholars continue to produce new interpretations and sources of historical knowledge, others in American society seek to revise the established historical record to assert their interpretation of historical events in the public sphere. Monuments and schoolboard meetings are sites of sometimes acrimonious contestations over history: what happened in the past and how Americans should learn and remember history. In this course, we will study a range of historical events, such as the Holocaust, Japanese American Incarceration, 9/11, and the Covid pandemic. We will examine how individuals and groups have wrestled with the challenges of recording and remembering these events, including their sometimes conflicting memories. We will look at the tensions that arise when different perspectives of events enter the public realm, whether in the form of museum exhibits, movies, photographs, or poems.

Fall semester.  Professor Hayashi.

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Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: the course will be heavily discussion-oriented with students required to participate in and facilitate class discussion. The course work will include short essay assignments and a major research project on a topic chosen by students. The course promotes critical reading skills, writing, and interdisciplinary scholarship and inquiry.