CMST&MM 715 / Cultural Memory, the Media, and “Us”

3 unit(s)

Prerequisite(s): Must be enrolled in Graduate Plan in Communciation & Multimedia or CNMCS

In this class, students will examine how society is affected by the pervasive pasts-historical, national, cultural, personal-propagated through a range of media and media forms. Moving beyond questions of “historical accuracy,” students will consider how scholars have theorized these pasts and their mediation through several much-debated concepts, including collective memory, cultural memory, the archive, and nostalgia. Students will attend throughout the course to how mediated accounts of the past help shape normative concepts of group and individual identity, as well as to how these concepts may be challenged, making space for other stories and, even, for other futures. Students will engage with these debates through live and virtual discussion and the completion of a final research paper.