This course explores the processes of collective memory: how, through time and across space, societies have chosen to inscribe the past: on bodies, in architecture, as art, as ritual, as song, and as myth, as well as more conventionally in literature and written history. What do we choose to remember, and what do we choose to forget? How do the media of recording memory shape memory? What are the consequences of literacy? What notions of time and event, present and past, are evoked by ways of remembering? How does collective memory shape society and the identities of groups and individuals? Examples will be drawn from such sources as Hawaiian memories of Captain Cook, the invention of "traditional" rituals of state in the British colonial rule of India, the body images of Nazi propaganda, a variety of origin myths, and the civic rituals of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Class format: discussion seminar. Requirements: class participation, take-home midterm, research paper. Prerequisite: any upper-level course in Anthropology or Sociology or permission of instructor.
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