Sgs344 Facing the Past

SYLLABUS 2015

SGS 344: Facing the Past -Truth, Memory, and Denial after Atrocity

Fall 2015 Victor Peskin

Tu/Thu 10:30-11:45 AM Coor Hall. Rm. 6688

Victor.Peskin@asu.ed

Office phone: 965-4733 Off. Hrs: Tu 1:30-3:30 PM & by appointment

“The past is not dead; it is not even past.”

William Faulkner

“He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” George Orwell

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

“A human being survives by his ability to forget.”

Varlam Shalamov

Course Overview

The past has never been so present as it is today. Over the last two decades, the world has shown an increasing interest in uncovering the hidden and forgotten histories of state-sponsored atrocities and acknowledging the fate of victims and survivors. This movement for the recovery of truth, memory, and moral responsibility includes a wide range of actors and takes a number of different forms, such as:

* scholarship that determines the causes and dynamics of mass violence.

* investigative journalism that exposes state complicity in human rights abuses and subsequent state campaigns of denial.

* museums and memorials that seek to educate a nation’s citizenry about atrocities and commemorate victims.

* victim-based campaigns for reparations and apologies.

* individual efforts to reconstruct the histories of murdered friends and family members and thereby preserve and honor their memory.

* government bodies that produce definitive accounts of massacres and terrorist attacks.

* truth commissions that scrutinize a country’s complicity and suffering at the hands of state and non-state actors.

* domestic and international war crimes trials that hold individual suspects accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide.

If ours is an age of acknowledgment and accountability, it is also an...