106-404 Memory and Contemporary Culture

Formerly available as 106-127. Students who have completed 106-127 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours in English, see Honours entry.

The aim of this subject is to explore a theoretical history of remembrance in contemporary culture. We will begin by considering the massive transformations in cultural memory brought about by modernity. From this starting point we will consider the trajectories of cultural memory from Freud's curative hypotheses to the dominance of amnesia and trauma as tropes of memory in contemporary culture. Students will be expected to read and explore both theoretical accounts of contemporary cultural memory and to produce specific studies of the ways in which mechanical reproduction, testimony, the bureaucratic and state archive, film, monuments, museums, digital technologies and other cultural products and institutions have formed and continue to form contemporary cultures of remembrance.

Written work totalling 5000 words for 4th year and postgraduate diploma, 6000 words for masters students.

A subject reader will be available.