In this course, we will be concerned with the continued presence of the past in individual, social, and political life. The first part of the course (roughly, a third) will begin with a survey of work on memory over the past thirty or so years (the ‘memory boom’) and then examine relevant work by some of its most important theorists. These will include: Walter Benjamin, Freud, and Jan & Aleida Assmann. In the second part (roughly, two thirds) we will look at some of the questions that have been the concern of memory studies – and memory politics – over the past few years. These will include: To what extent is the notion of trauma appropriate to historical events? What is the political role of memory? What is the relationship between memory and history? What is at stake in the ‘history wars’ that are being waged in the United States, Germany, Israel, Australia? What forms of commemoration are appropriate to past horrors (e.g. slavery, the Holocaust, AIDS, Vietnam War, 9/11)? Who has the responsibility to remember these?