BOOKS:

Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Uncivil War (Vintage, 1999).

Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, eds., The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (University of North Carolina, 2004).

James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (Touchstone, 2000).

Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (The New Press, 2004).

George Lipstiz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (University of Minnesota, 2001).

John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1993).

Peter N. Carroll, Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Art of History (University of Georgia, 1990).

Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (Henry Holt, 1996).

Paul A. Shackel, Myth, Memory and the Making of the American Landscape (University Press of Florida, 2001).

We will read the above books in order--one per week--beginning our first discussion on June 14 with  Confederates in the Attic.

Articles and pieces may be provided periodically.

Attendance and preparation is very important. Your course grade is based upon the essays and discussions. In addition, each student will be responsible for leading one of the discussion sessions. The essays, discussing the major themes and issues in that week's readings, should be approximately 3-5 pages in length and in the nature of a journal; that is, "think pieces" written analytically, but not necessarily formally. A good approach is to identify and summarize the major arguments, major assumptions, and use of evidence. What themes resonated with you after you finished reading? What questions did they raise for you? Muse about it; be speculative, creative. First person narrative is great. I would appreciate them typed. These are due at each class. Because they are meant to aid discussion, late essays will not be accepted.

What are the stakes in the struggles to shape public memory?
How does an event become named? become history?
How does one version of the American experience, past or present, displace another?
Why do some cultural phenomena achieve prominence while others remain obscure?
What are the relationships between power, myth, and history?
What are the relationships between history, tradition, heritage, nostalgia, and memory?