ATS3080 Remembering the past

Why and how do individuals and communities such as nations remember and forget the past? How are individual and collective representations of the past produced and transmitted, and received or rejected? What determines why some representations of the past triumph while others fail, and what are the implications of this for relationships of power within a society? Why has there been a boom in the phenomenon of memory in recent times as well as a surge in scholarly interest in the study of it? How has memory contributed to our historical knowledge? What have been the main approaches, key concepts and principal methods utilised in the study of memory? How has memory contributed to our historical knowledge, and what is the relationship between memory and history? In this unit we will explore the expanding field of memory studies by considering a series of case studies of how communities and individuals remember the past, from the medieval period to the present.