Memory politics look at how the past is instrumentalized to meet different political aims and interests in the modern day. Certain aspects of the past may be promoted, excluded, commemorated, or erased. This course provides an overview of several different manifestations of memory politics. There are several examples of the use, abuse, and silencing of the past in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe as well as in Scandinavia. Nations, minorities, families, and individuals deal with traumatic pasts over generations, without getting acknowledgement. Among other cases, we will look to World War 2 and the Holocaust, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and to current indigenous movements to investigate how, for example, Sámi past is presented and included in the national museums in Stockholm.
Related Discipline(s)
This summer course would also be of interest to the following discipline(s):Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Public Policy
