Students
MHIS750 – Remembering Trauma in the 20th Century
2016 – S1 Day
General Information
Download as PDF
| Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Convenor
Margaret Sampson
Contact via email
Weekly session Friday4:00pm- 6:00pm Y3A 218 Tutorial Rm
Administrator for Modern History
Jackie Anker
Contact via 02 9850 8879
W6A 400
|
|---|---|
| Credit points |
Credit points
4
|
| Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
Admission to MRes
|
| Corequisites |
Corequisites
|
| Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
MHPG850
|
| Unit description |
Unit description
This unit considers how collective traumas were remembered in the 20th century. It examines how individuals, communities, nations and societies have remembered events like the Holocaust, colonialism, genocide, wartime slaughter and epidemics. This involves investigating how various artefacts of trauma (such as memorials, reconciliation commissions, testimonies and political protests) attempt to make sense of the past for particular political and psychological affect. In so doing, the unit explores how collective dynamics of remembrance and/or forgetting sustain and disavow identities, shape and challenge political movements and impact everyday lives.
|
Important Academic Dates
Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Understand and evaluate the category of trauma in historical analysis
- Critically evaluate the use of interdisciplinary approaches in historical research
- Identify, critically analyze and discuss the major debates and controversies involved in this subject
- Understand and explain why different scholars interpret sources differently, and how they construct their arguments
- Devise, plan and execute an original piece of historical research
- Identify the most creative and appropriate strategies to conduct research that will solve these research problems or generate new knowledge
- Evaluate existing historical evidence and construct your own critical, scholarly interpretation of the key issues involved in researching an episode of historical trauma
- Evaluate the utility of trauma as a category to conduct historical research
General Assessment Information
Referencing
All essays should comply with the MQ Modern History style guide. This is available online http://www.modhist.mq.edu.au/writingessays.html
Assignment Submission
You must submit all your assignments via turnitin assignments on ilearn.
Extensions and Penalties
Late essays will be penalized 2% per business day. Extensions, if required, must be requested with supporting documentation before the due date.
Returning Assignments
Assessment will be returned (except the take-home synoptic paper) within 3 weeks.
Assessment Tasks
| Name | Weighting | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion leadership one week | 10% | week 12 |
| Seminar participation | 10% | week 12 |
| Preliminary Research Exercise | 10% | week 4 |
| Research Essay | 40% | week 10 |
| Synoptic Paper | 30% | week 13 |
Discussion leadership one week
Due: week 12
Weighting: 10%
Each student will launch discussion of one week's topic to be allocated in the first week of discussions
On successful completion you will be able to:
- Critically evaluate the use of interdisciplinary approaches in historical research
- Understand and explain why different scholars interpret sources differently, and how they construct their arguments
Seminar participation
Due: week 12
Weighting: 10%
Weekly seminars are compulsory. Students will be assessed on their active participation in weekly discussions.
On successful completion you will be able to:
- Understand and evaluate the category of trauma in historical analysis
Preliminary Research Exercise
Due: week 4
Weighting: 10%
1,000 words This exercise will provide students with the opportunity to submit a brief paper that explores some of the questions about their major research essay and introduces the literature.
In this assignment you must:
1.Compile a reading list and describe how at least three secondary sources will assist you to answer the question.
2. Describe the history of your chosen artifact and what questions its raises about trauma and memory
On successful completion you will be able to:
- Critically evaluate the use of interdisciplinary approaches in historical research
- Identify, critically analyze and discuss the major debates and controversies involved in this subject
- Devise, plan and execute an original piece of historical research
- Identify the most creative and appropriate strategies to conduct research that will solve these research problems or generate new knowledge
- Evaluate existing historical evidence and construct your own critical, scholarly interpretation of the key issues involved in researching an episode of historical trauma
Research Essay
Due: week 10
Weighting: 40%
2,500 words Students will devise and complete a research essay that investigates the historical remembrance of an episode of collective trauma
Answer one of the following questions with reference to one artifact of trauma (such as a memorial, government commission, film, memoir, object etc) OR devise an essay topic of your own concerning an episode of remembering trauma in the 20thc. The topic must be passed by the convenor first and must not be work that you have submitted elsewhere.
1. Did telling the truth in South Africa’s TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) alleviate the trauma of apartheid?
See, for example: Grunebaum, Heidi and Yazir Henri, “Re-membering Bodies, Producing Histories: Holocaust Survivor Narrative and Truth and Reconciliation Commission Testimony.” In World Memory: personal trajectories in global time, edited by Jill Bennett and Rosanne Kennedy, 101-118. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
2. Did the AIDS quilt dull the political edge of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the US?
See, for example: Sturken, Marita. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic and the politics of remembering. California: University of California Press, 1997.
3. How did the apology by the Rudd government recognise the trauma of the stolen generations? Was it (psychologically or politically) adequate?
See, for example: Healy, Chris. Forgetting Aborigines. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008; Collins, Felicity Jane and Therese Verdun Davis. Australian Cinema after Mabo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
4. Why did soldiers struggle to articulate the trauma of WWI?
See, for example: Hunt, Nigel C. Memory, War and Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010; Bourke, Joanna. Dismembering the male: men’s bodies, Britain and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
5. Does testimony ever do justice to the trauma of the Holocaust?
See, for example: Felman, Shosana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, psychoanalysis, and history. London, Routledge: 1992; Levi, Neil and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
6. How has a unified German state attempted to come to terms with the Holocaust?
See, for example: Kansteiner, Wulf. In Pursuit of German memory: history, television, and politics after Auschwitz. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006.
On successful completion you will be able to:
- Understand and explain why different scholars interpret sources differently, and how they construct their arguments
- Devise, plan and execute an original piece of historical research
- Identify the most creative and appropriate strategies to conduct research that will solve these research problems or generate new knowledge
- Evaluate existing historical evidence and construct your own critical, scholarly interpretation of the key issues involved in researching an episode of historical trauma
Synoptic Paper
Due: week 13
Weighting: 30%
2,000 words .The question for this assignment will be posted online.You will not be required to complete any further research.
On successful completion you will be able to:
- Understand and evaluate the category of trauma in historical analysis
- Critically evaluate the use of interdisciplinary approaches in historical research
- Identify, critically analyze and discuss the major debates and controversies involved in this subject
- Evaluate the utility of trauma as a category to conduct historical research
Delivery and Resources
Required and Recommended Resources
A book of required readings is available from the beginning of the ilearn site– some further useful (but not compulsory) titles have been listed below.
May additional resources are availalble online on our ilearn site.
Ashplant, T. G., Graham Dawson and Micahel Roper. The Politics of War and Commemoration. London: Routledge, 2000.
Caruth, Cathy, ed. Trauma: Exploration in Memory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Felman, Soshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Routledge, 1992.
LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Micale, Mark S. and Paul Lerner. Traumatic Pasts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Tumarkin, Maria. Traumascapes. Carlton, Victoria: Melboune University Publishing, 2005.
Winter, Jay M. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Young, James E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993
Unit Schedule
Week 1- Introduction: Trauma as a category of historical analysis
Essential Readings
Brison, Susan J. “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self.” In Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, edited by Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer, 39-52. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999.
Radstone, Susannah. “Trauma theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics.” Paragraph 30, 1 (2007), 9-29.
Caruth, Cathy. “Introduction.” In Trauma: Exploration in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 3-11. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Further Readings
Prager, Jeffrey. “Healing from History: Psychoanalytic Considerations on Traumatic Pasts and Social Repair.” European Journal of Social Theory 11, 3 (2008): 405-420.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. “Introduction.” In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil K. Smelser, Piotr Sztompka, 1-30. California and England: University of California Press, 2004.
Leys, Ruth. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Fassin, Didier and Richard Rechtman, ed. The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. New Jersey and Oxfordshire: Flammarion, 2009.
Questions
- How might we define and discern collective historical trauma?
- In what ways can past trauma intrude upon the present?
- Is a traumatised relationship to the past ahistorical?
- Do traumatic experiences forge collective identities?
Week 2 - Collective Memory and Identity
Essential Readings
Kenny, Michael G. “A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History.” In Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, 3 (1999): 420-437.
Blight, David. “The Memory Boom: why and why now?” In Memory in Mind and Culture, edited by Pascal Boyer and James Wertsch, 238-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Further Readings
Bell, Duncan. “Introduction: Violence and Memory.” Millenium: Journal of International Studies 38, 2 (2009): 345-360.
Zelizer, Barbie. “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies.” In Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, 2 (1995): 214-239.
Olick, Jeffrey K., Vered Vinizky Seroussi and Daniel Levy, ed. The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford and NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Hutton, Patrick. “Recent Scholarship on Memory and History.” The History Teacher 33, 4 (August 2000): 533-548.
Questions
- What is ‘collective memory’?
- What can this reveal about the societies in which it emerges?
- What kinds of groups “possess” collective memories?
- Why has there been a boom in the study of memory in late modernity?
Week 3 - WWI:Psychoanalysis and the discovery of trauma
Essential Readings
Lerner, Paul and Mark Micale. “Trauma, Psychiatry and History: A Conceptual and Historiographical Introduction.” In Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, edited by Paul Lerner and Mark Micale, 1-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Tallbott, John. “Soldiers, Psychiatrists, and Combat Trauma.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27, 3 (1997): 437-454
Garton, Stephen. “Longing for War: Nostalgia and Australian returned soldiers after the First World War.” In The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, edited by T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper, 222-239. London: Routledge, 2000.
Further Readings
Leed, Eric J. “An Exit from the Labyrinth — Neuroses and War.” In No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War 1, 163-192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Stone, Martin. “Shell-shock and the Psychologists.” In The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the history of psychiatry, edited by W. F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd. Vol. 2, Institutions and Society, 242-271. London and New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985.
Leys, Ruth. “Traumatic Cures: Shell-shock, Janet and the Question of Memory.” Critical Inquiry 20, 4 (Summer 1994): 623-662.
Questions
- What were the connections between new ways of understanding trauma and the characteristics of modernity?
- Was the advent of modernity itself traumatic?
- Did psychiatrists reveal or invent the category of trauma in their treatment of shell-shock?
- How did the trauma of soldiers reverberate in the post war years?
Week 4 - Holocaust I: Experience and Testimony
Essential Readings
Laub, Dori. “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History edited by Soshana Felman and Dori Laub, 57-74. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Laub, Dori. “An Event Without a Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, edited by Soshana Felman and Dori Laub, 75-92. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Faye, Esther. “Impossible Memories and the History of Trauma.” In World Memory: Personal Trajectories in Global Time, edited by Jill Bennett and Roseanne Kennedy, 160-176. Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2003.
Further Readings
van Alphen, Ernst. “Second-Generation Testimony, Transmission of Trauma, and Postmemory.” Poetics Today 27, 2 (Summer 2006): 473 - 488.
Hirsch, Marianne and Leo Spitzer. “The Witness in the Archive: Holocaust Studies/Memory Studies.” In Memory: History, Theories, Debates, edited by Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz, 390-405. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.
Kushner, Tony. “Holocaust Testimony, Ethics, and the Problem of Representation.” Poetics 27, 2 (2006): 275-295.
Haartman, Geoffrey. The Longest Shadow: In the aftermath of the Holocaust. NY and England: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
Questions
- Does the testimony of trauma always have an imagined witness?
- What does Laub mean when he describes the holocaust as an event without a witness?
- How does the way historians feel about historical trauma affect the way they write?
- Should we test traumatic testimony for its historical accuracy?
Week 5 - Holocaust II: Popular Culture
Essential Readings
Watch either:
Benigni, Robert. La vita è bella [Life is Beautiful]. Cecchi Cori Group, 1997.
or excerpts from
Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah. New Yorker Films, 1985.
[widely available online]
And read either:
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. “The Secret Histories of Roberto Benigni's ‘Life is Beautiful.’”Yale Journal of Criticism 14, 1 (Spring 2001): 253-266.
or
Felman, Shoshana. “In an Era of Testimony: Claude Lanzmann's ‘Shoah.’“ Yale French Studies 79, (1991): 39-81.
Further Readings
Santner, Eric L. Stranded Objects. NY: Cornell University, 1990.
Hirsch, Joshua. “Introduction to Film, Trauma and the Holocaust.” In After Image: Film, Trauma and the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.
Cowie, Elizabeth. "Seeing and Hearing for Ourselves: The Spectacle of Reality in the Holocaust Documentary." In Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933, 182-188. New York: Wallflower Press, 2005.
Doneson, Judith E. “Whose history is it?” In The Holocaust in American Film, 197-216. NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002.
Zelizer, Barbie. “Collective Memories, Images, and the Atrocity of War.” Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera's Eye, 1-15. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. NY: Farrar, Straua and Giroux, 2003.
Questions
- Why has the Holocaust taken so much space in public memory?
- Can film adequately represent the trauma of the Holocaust?
- Do you think film provides a mechanism for the trauma of the Holocaust to be experienced by subsequent generations?
- Was Benigni’s film dishonest?
Week 6 - Holocaust III: The trauma of perpetrators
Essential Readings
Mitzcherlich, A and M. “The Inability to Mourn.” In Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers, edited by Robert J. Lifton, 257-270. Simon & Schuster, 1975.
Wielenga, Friso. “An inability to mourn? The German Federal Republic and the Nazi past.” European Review 11, 4 (2003): 551–572.
Young, James E. “The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today.” Critical Inquiry 18, 2 (1992): 267-296.
Further Readings
LaCapra, Dominick. “Revisiting the Historians’ Debate: Mourning and Genocide.” In History and Memory after Auschwitz, 43-72. NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Giesen, B. “The Trauma of Perpetrators: the Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity.” In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil K. Smelser, Piotr Sztompka, 112-254. California and England: University of California Press, 2004.
Edkins, Jenny. “Concentration camp memorials and museums: Dachau and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.” In Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 111-174. Cambridge, NY, Port Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Harris, Cecily. “Germany Memory of the Holocaust: The Emergence of Counter-Memorials.” Penn History Review 17, 2 (Spring 2010): 34-59.
Questions
- According to the Mitscherlichs, why and how did West Germans deny their Nazi past in the post-war decades?
- What historical factors complicate or undermine the Mitscherlichs psyhological thesis of collective German guilt?
- What do conventional memorials to the Holocaust silence?
- How do counter-memorials attempt to change the ways Germans engage with their Nazi past?
Week 7 - Northern Ireland: Contested Sites of Commemoration
Essential Readings
Dorahy, Martin J. and Michael C. Paterson. “Trauma and Dissociation in Northern Ireland.” Journal of Trauma Practice 4, 3 (2006): 221-243.
Dawson, Graham. "Trauma, Place and the Politics of Memory: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972–2004.” History Workshop Journal 59, (Spring 2005): 151-178.
Further Readings
Conway, Brian. Commemoration and Bloody Sunday: Pathways of Memory. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
McBride, Ian. “Memory and national identity in modern Ireland.” In History and Memory in Modern Ireland, edited by Ian McBride, 1-42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Beiner, Guy. “Between Trauma and Triumphalism: The Easter Rising, the Somme, and the Crux of Deep Memory in Modern Ireland.” The Journal of British Studies 46, 2 (April 2007): 366-389.
Dawson, Graham. Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Rolston, Bill. “‘Trying to reach the future through the past’: Murals and memory in Northern Ireland.” Crime, Media, Culture 6, 3 (December 2010): 285-307.
Questions
- How is trauma manifested in Northern Ireland?
- What is post-memory?
- How is trauma attached to place?
- How have commemorative sites in Northern Ireland repeated the troubled politics of Northern Ireland?
- Who has the right to claim trauma in Northern Ireland?
Week 8 - Historical Truths and the “Working Through” of Colonial Wounds
Essential Readings
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “History and the Politics of Recognition.” In Manifestos for History, edited by Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan and Alun Munslow, 77-87. Oxon and NY: Routledge, 2007.
Humphrey, Michael. “From Terror to Trauma: Commissioning Truth for National Reconciliation.” Social Identities 6, (2000): 6-27.
Further Readings
Humphrey, Michael. “From Victim to Victimhood: Truth Commissions and Trials as Rituals of Political Transition and Individual Healing.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 14, 2 (2003): 171-187.
Grunebaum, Heidi and Yazir Henri, “Re-membering Bodies, Producing Histories: Holocaust Survivor Narrative and Truth and Reconciliation Commission Testimony.” In World Memory: personal trajectories in global time, edited by Jill Bennett and Rosanne Kennedy, 101-118. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Posel, Deborah. “History as confession: The case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Public Culture 20, 1 (2008): 119-141.
Kennedy, Rosanne, Lynne Bell and Julia Emberly, “Decolonising Testimony: On the Possibilities and Limits of Witnessing.” Humanities Research 15, 3 (2009): 1-10.
Torpey, John. Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers: 2003.
Questions
- According to Chakrabarty, what historical conditions provide the mechanism for the recognition of historical wounds?
- Why is this recognition important? And, what are its effects?
- Does telling the truth about a traumatic episode necessarily produce useful historical and psychological outcomes?
Week 9 Reading Week
Week 10: HIV/AIDS
Essential Readings
Caruth, Cathy and Thomas Keenan. “The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over: A Conversation with Gregg Borowitz, Douglas Crimp, and Laura Pinsky.” In Trauma: Exploration in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 256-272. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Hawkins, Peter S. “The Art of Memory and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt.” Critical Inquiry 19, (Summer 1993):752-779.
Further Readings
Sturken, Marita. “Conversations with the Dead: Bearing Witness in the AIDS Memorial Quilt.” In Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering, 183-219. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Crimp, Douglas. “The Spectacle of Mourning.” In Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics, 195-202. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2002.
Blair, Carole and Neil Michel. “The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration.” Rhetorics and Public Affairs 10, 4 (Winter 2007): 595-626.
Rand, Erin J. “Repeated Remembrance: Commemorating the AIDS Quilt and Resuscitating the Mourned Subject.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10, 4 (Winter 2007): 655-680.
Questions
- Who experienced the AIDS crisis as traumatic? Who didn’t?
- How did the AIDS quilt politicise grief during the 1980s and 1990s?
- Do types of traumas deserve specific types of memorialisation?
- Why are some traumas granted national recognition and others not?
Week 11 - The Stolen Generation
Essential Readings
Attwood, Bain. ”The Australian Patient: traumatic pasts and the work of history.” In The Geography of Meanings: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Place, Space, Land, and Dislocation, edited by Maria T.S. Hooke and Salman Akhtar, 63-78. London: International Psychoanalytical Association, 1975.
Levi, Neil. “No Sensible Comparison: the Place of the Holocaust in Australia’s History Wars.” History and Memory 19, 1 (2007): 124-156.
Further Readings
Healy, Chris. Forgetting Aborigines. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008.
Rothberg, Michael. “Part I: Boomerang Effects: Bare life, Trauma, and the Colonial Turn in Holocaust Studies.” In Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonisation, 33-110. California: Standford University Press, 2009.
Whitlock, Gillian. “Active remembrance: testimony, memoir and the work of reconciliation.” In Rethinking Settler Colonialism: History and Memory in Australia, Canada, Aoetearoa New Zealand and South Africa, 24-44. NY: Manchester University Press, 2006.
Questions
- Who remembers the trauma of the stolen generations?
- Why was the settler state unwilling to apologise for so many years?
- Have other events provided the framework for the remembrance of colonial wounds?
Week 12- The Trauma of 9/11
Essential Readings
Clark, Mary Marshall. “The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A First Report.” The Journal of American History 89, 2 (2002): 569-57.
Sturken, Marita. “Tourism and Sacred Ground: The Space of Ground Zero.” In Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero, 165-218. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
Further Readings
Greenberg, Judith. Trauma at Home: after 9/11. Lincoln: Bison Books, 2003.
Young, James E. “The Stages of Memory at Ground Zero.” In Religion, Violence, Memory and Place, edited by Oren Baruch Stier and J. Shawn Landres, 214-234. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Sloan, Stephen. “Oral History and Hurricane Katrina: Reflections on Shouts and Silences.” Oral History Review 35, 2 (2008): 176-186.
Edkins, Jenny. “September 11, New York and Washington” and “Conclusion.” In Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 224-229. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Questions
- Why is Marshall Clark optimistic about the potential of oral history? Do you agree?
- How might oral testimony draw on wider cultural frames of remembrance?
- Are there any ethical problems with interviewing traumatised subjects?
- What does Sturken’s study of tourism suggest about the political effects of trauma?
Week 13 - Conclusions
Essential Readings
Lacquer, Thomas. “We Are All Victims Now.” London Review of Books (London), July 8 2010, 19-23.
Bourke, Joanna. “Sexual Trauma in Historical Perspective.” Arbor 743, (2010): 407-416.
Further Readings
LaCapra, Dominick. “Trauma, Absence, Loss.” Critical Inquiry 25, (1999): 696-727.
Kansteiner, Wulf. “Genealogy of a category mistake: a critical intellectual history of the cultural trauma metaphor.” Rethinking History 8, 2 (2004): 193-221.
Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question. London: Routledge, 2008.
Questions
- Are there dangers in using psychological categories to investigate the past?
- Do you think that a wider culture of “victimhood” has emerged in late modernity?
- Should we draw differences between the types of trauma people experience? How might we do so?
Policies and Procedures
Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central. Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:
Academic Honesty Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/policy.html
New Assessment Policy in effect from Session 2 2016 http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/policy_2016.html. For more information visit http://students.mq.edu.au/events/2016/07/19/new_assessment_policy_in_place_from_session_2/
Assessment Policy prior to Session 2 2016 http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/policy.html
Grading Policy prior to Session 2 2016 http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grading/policy.html
Grade Appeal Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/gradeappeal/policy.html
Complaint Management Procedure for Students and Members of the Public http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/complaint_management/procedure.html
Disruption to Studies Policy http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/disruption_studies/policy.html The Disruption to Studies Policy is effective from March 3 2014 and replaces the Special Consideration Policy.
In addition, a number of other policies can be found in the Learning and Teaching Category of Policy Central.
Student Code of Conduct
Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/support/student_conduct/
Results
Results shown in iLearn, or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au.
Student Support
Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/
Learning Skills
Learning Skills (mq.edu.au/learningskills) provides academic writing resources and study strategies to improve your marks and take control of your study.
Student Services and Support
Students with a disability are encouraged to contact the Disability Service who can provide appropriate help with any issues that arise during their studies.
Student Enquiries
For all student enquiries, visit Student Connect at ask.mq.edu.au
IT Help
For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/.
When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.
Graduate Capabilities
PG - Capable of Professional and Personal Judgment and Initiative
Our postgraduates will demonstrate a high standard of discernment and common sense in their professional and personal judgment. They will have the ability to make informed choices and decisions that reflect both the nature of their professional work and their personal perspectives.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Learning outcomes
- Identify the most creative and appropriate strategies to conduct research that will solve these research problems or generate new knowledge
- Evaluate existing historical evidence and construct your own critical, scholarly interpretation of the key issues involved in researching an episode of historical trauma
- Evaluate the utility of trauma as a category to conduct historical research
PG - Discipline Knowledge and Skills
Our postgraduates will be able to demonstrate a significantly enhanced depth and breadth of knowledge, scholarly understanding, and specific subject content knowledge in their chosen fields.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Learning outcomes
- Understand and evaluate the category of trauma in historical analysis
- Critically evaluate the use of interdisciplinary approaches in historical research
- Evaluate existing historical evidence and construct your own critical, scholarly interpretation of the key issues involved in researching an episode of historical trauma
- Evaluate the utility of trauma as a category to conduct historical research
PG - Critical, Analytical and Integrative Thinking
Our postgraduates will be capable of utilising and reflecting on prior knowledge and experience, of applying higher level critical thinking skills, and of integrating and synthesising learning and knowledge from a range of sources and environments. A characteristic of this form of thinking is the generation of new, professionally oriented knowledge through personal or group-based critique of practice and theory.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Learning outcomes
- Identify, critically analyze and discuss the major debates and controversies involved in this subject
- Understand and explain why different scholars interpret sources differently, and how they construct their arguments
- Evaluate existing historical evidence and construct your own critical, scholarly interpretation of the key issues involved in researching an episode of historical trauma
- Evaluate the utility of trauma as a category to conduct historical research
Assessment task
- Synoptic Paper
PG - Research and Problem Solving Capability
Our postgraduates will be capable of systematic enquiry; able to use research skills to create new knowledge that can be applied to real world issues, or contribute to a field of study or practice to enhance society. They will be capable of creative questioning, problem finding and problem solving.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Learning outcomes
- Devise, plan and execute an original piece of historical research
- Identify the most creative and appropriate strategies to conduct research that will solve these research problems or generate new knowledge
Assessment tasks
- Preliminary Research Exercise
- Research Essay
PG - Effective Communication
Our postgraduates will be able to communicate effectively and convey their views to different social, cultural, and professional audiences. They will be able to use a variety of technologically supported media to communicate with empathy using a range of written, spoken or visual formats.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Learning outcome
- Devise, plan and execute an original piece of historical research
Assessment tasks
- Discussion leadership one week
- Seminar participation
- Research Essay
- Synoptic Paper
PG - Engaged and Responsible, Active and Ethical Citizens
Our postgraduates will be ethically aware and capable of confident transformative action in relation to their professional responsibilities and the wider community. They will have a sense of connectedness with others and country and have a sense of mutual obligation. They will be able to appreciate the impact of their professional roles for social justice and inclusion related to national and global issues
This graduate capability is supported by:
Learning outcome
- Evaluate the utility of trauma as a category to conduct historical research
Assessment task
- Synoptic Paper