Memorialising the Past

How we remember the past has been subject to increasingly thorny debate in Australia and related western democracies, pointing to the ways in which history holds powerful afterlives in the present. This course explores the complex relationship between history and its contemporary afterlives by focusing on how public historical memory is made and remade through commemoration and memorial practices. Drawing upon case studies from the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland, this course pays particular attention to national discussions and disputes about how to reconcile with contested histories, especially histories of slavery and colonialism as part of the shared foundations on which the modern Anglophone world was built. In examining current debates and trends relating to historical commemoration and memorial practices, students will undertake research on some of the following themes: recent developments in the theory of historical memory and its role in contemporary society; the politics of historical knowledge and the ways it can be produced, challenged and revised through acts of memorialisation; issues of audience in accounts of the past that shape or interrogate ideas of collective identity; differences between national and regional forums of historical memory; and global debates about contested histories and transitional justice.