Course info

Memory of the past shapes identities in the present. The study of collective memory of different groups, corporations, ethnic groups, nations, states and empires helps to understand how they perceived the past and by commemoration used it to forge present. In this course we will study collective memory and commemorative practices in historically vibrant space – the Baltic Sea region (BSR). In the course we will use case studies from the Baltic Countries, Nordic Countries and Russia to see how historical (mainly medieval and early modern) personalities and events have been used in collectively remembering the past. The course will cover time-period from the Christianisation (12th/13th century) until the nationalism and authoritarianism (mid-20th century). 

The aim of the course is to develop following competencies: to have an insight into theories and conceptual approaches in the research of collective memory and commemoration from the historical perspective; to have an oversight of the BSR’s political and cultural history between the Middle Ages and the 20th century; to develop skills in work with a broad set of sources: historical texts (documents, chronicles, etc.), literary texts (poems, novels etc), visual representations (paintings, sculptures, monuments, etc.), multimedia (movies, sound archives, etc.); to analyse a chosen case study of commemoration or specific phenomenon of collective memory in a written essay (15-20 pages). 

Venue: online, first three meetings at the university campus. 

Literature:

Jan Assmann. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; Jeffrey K. Olick. ‘”Collective Memory”. A Memoir and Prospect’. Memory Studies 1 (2008): 23–30; Pierre Nora. ‘Between Memory and History. Les Lieux de Mémoire’. Representations 26 (1989): 7–24; Benedict R. Anderson. Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 2016; Patrick J. Geary. Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994; Neil Kent. A Concise History of Sweden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Andrejs Plakans. A Concise History of the Baltic States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; David Kirby. A Concise History of Finland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.