Instructors: Jules Riegel and Jorge Sanchez Cruz
Meeting time: Wednesday, 12:15-2:45 pm
Canvas Site
This course examines the long-term social, cultural, and political effects of historical catastrophes for those who experienced these events and for those who lived after. We will examine these crises—including colonialism, natural disasters, dictatorship, war, and genocide—and their aftermaths through a range of methodologies in order to understand how individuals’ and societies’ memories shape politics, identities, and conflicts. We will explore how art, literature, monuments, museums, film, and historical archives reflect on and shape the consequences of war, catastrophe, and dictatorship. From a transnational and trans-archival lens, we will situate these aftermaths in Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States, Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. Should governments pay reparations to the descendants of those harmed by past policies? How can societies bring perpetrators of historical crimes to justice? How should those crimes and their victims be commemorated? ( Image credit: Gamaliel Rodriguez,
Collapsed Soul)
