This senior seminar deals with the way war is remembered. Historians seek to close the gap between the image and the reality of events. Few happenings make this task as difficult as when the horrors and consequences of human warfare are in any way involved.
People remember war in many ways for many reasons.
Memorials to heroes mark more than a simple record of sacrifice, for instance. In the modern world, commemoration, political campaigns, arts and entertainments, literature, and written history all bear the mark of the pride, the passion, and the guilt that both the individual and the collective carry with our memories of the wars of the modern age. This course will examine the complexities at work in this relationship. Using memoirs, monographs, literature, film, and a concentration on case studies, and building on smaller projects and intense and structured class discussion, students will prepare for their own individual development of a major senior project. This endeavor will address the ways in which the memory and the use of the memory of war has shaped a particular history and society.