HIST 392
Producing the Past
Last Offered Spring 2008
Division II
Cross-listed SOC 345 / ASST 345
This course is not offered in the current catalog

In response to the apparent rise in individual and collective celebrations of “traditional community” over the past two decades, this course will examine how the past is mobilized in order to animate collective identities, address contemporary grievances, and produce events in the present. We will consider the emergence of modern forms of historical consciousness and writing and interrogate the modalities by which they are produced. Participants will read critical works focused on a range of cultural settings, all of which consider the production of the past in connection with the following topics: “community,” nation, and religion; collective memory; disciplinary knowledge and power; “tradition,” race, and gender; genocide and democracy; and constructing objects of inquiry.