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Melissa Bokovoy
Office: 1104 Mesa Vista
Phone: 277-2451 (O)

Spring 2016
History 492/UHON 402
Email: mbokovoy@unm.edu

History 492: How Do Societies Remember

Funded and supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Enduring Question grant, this
seminar for History and Humanities students will explore the enduring question of How do Societies
Remember?
In 1989 Paul Connerton asked a simple question, one that had been asked before and in a variety of
different ways: How do societies remember? He was but one of a number of scholars in the 1980s who began to
the interrogate memory as it related to the construction of collective memories among members of a social group.
Ignited by Pierre Noras idea of Les lieux de mmoire, the concept memory has become a familiar word among
historians, literary scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and others who have sought to understand the
interstices of memory, those moments when a specific historical event is wrapped in the cloak of timelessness and
becomes part of a cultures collective memory or consciousness. Familiar and much studied by the academy, the
topic History and Memory has remained primarily a subject of advanced professional inquiry, its
methodologies, theories, and concepts passed from professor to professor, and from professor to graduate student.
The humanistic disciplines offer opportunities to present papers and publish research on, and engage graduate
students with this topic, but few programs expose undergraduates to the enduring question, How do Societies
Remember?
We will read and talk about the following questions: What is the role of memory in pre-modern and
modern cultures? What are the mechanisms by which collective memory is created, maintained, communicated
and transformed? What is the role of narrative forms (including the new media), rituals, and landscapes in
shaping historical consciousness and memory? Who decides the official representations of the past in public
monuments and commemorations? And how are historical narratives influenced by the multiple ways in which the
past has been remembered, re-remembered, and deployed by various individuals, groups, and national
collectivities?
This is a seminar style course which means that you are required to come prepared for class and to
participate in discussion.
Required Reading:
Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1998
Homer, The Iliad. Translated by Peter Green
Morrison, Toni. Paradise. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Sebald,W.G. Austerlitz. New York: Random House, 2001.
Available WebCT
Book of Lamentations
Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature On-Line (songs and tales)
Research Guide:

http://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/

Course Requirements:
1. Discussion(100 points). Each seminar day, you will determine on a scale of 1-4 your preparation and
contribution to the seminar.
2. Blogger for the Day(50 points). You will become the seminars blogger for one day, posing questions,
taking notes, and posting a one page summary(250 words) by the following class period.
3. Skill Building Analyses(100 points): You must write on 2 primary source assignments and 3
secondary source analyses). I will drop the lowest of the 3 secondary source analyses.
4. Semester Long Project(300 points)

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Department of History: Capstone Student Learning Outcomes
For History 491, 492 and Honors Thesis
1. By the senior year, each major will demonstrate ethical use of sources and provide accurate and properly
formatted citations in all formal papers for either capstone course (491 or 492).
2. Each major will demonstrate in their research project(s) for either capstone course (491 or 492) or the Honors
research semester (493) the abilities: to distinguish between primary and secondary sources; to identify and
evaluate evidence.
3. Each major will demonstrate, in either capstone course and/or in writing the Honors thesis (494), the ability to
formulate a clear argument, support the argument with appropriate and thorough evidence, and reach a
convincing conclusion.
4. Each major will demonstrate the ability to compare and contrast different processes, modes of thought, and
modes of expression from different historical time periods and in different geographic areas.
5. Each major will demonstrate in research topic choices and resulting papers the ability to recognize and
articulate the diversity of human experience, including ethnicity, race, language, sex, gender, as well as political,
economic, social, and cultural structures over time and space.
COURSE POLICIES
Academic Integrity: I personally take academic integrity seriously, and so do the Department of History and the
University of New Mexico. Students who violate University rules of academic dishonesty are subject to
disciplinary action in this course and at the University including course failure and/or dismissal from the
University. For an overview of History Department policies see:
http://history.unm.edu/common/documents/policies/GuidelinesonAcademicDishonesty_002.pdf
University policy regarding academic dishonesty, see: For the complete policy, go to the Pathfinder at
http://www.unm.edu/~pathfind/. Under Policies click on Full Text. Then click on Student Grievance
Procedure and scroll down to Article 3, Academic Dishonesty.
Religious Holy Day Policy: In this course, we follow the UNM Policy for observance of any religious holiday.
The Student should inform the Professor as far in advance as possible to make arrangements.
Class Attendance and Participation: Since this is a seminar and your capstone course, it is imperative that each
of you come to class each day. Your physical and intellectual presence in class each week means your own work
grows, and so do those of your classmates who benefit from your insights and take on the readings. Missing more
than three classes for whatever reason means, you will automatically lose 50% of your attendance and
participation grade.
Communication: Updates about the class will be mainly through WEBCT/Blackboard and email. Please make
sure you have an active email address registered to receive class emails. Ignorance of important class information
is inadmissible as an excuse for not doing class work.

Qualified students with disabilities needing appropriate academic adjustments should

contact me as soon as possible to ensure your needs are met in a timely manner. Handouts are available in
alternative accessible formats upon request.

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Class Topics and assignments
I. Introduction: Week 1
January 19: Introduction
Nora, Pierre; 1989. Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire, Representations 26: 724
January 21: How Societies Remember
Reading: Connerton, pp. vi-40; Social Memory; Use Secondary Source Analysis to move
through argument.
Skill Building Assignment: How to Read a Secondary Source Analysis on WebCT
II. Narrative: Week 2-6
WEEK 2.
January 26: Memory in Oral Tradition
Reading: The Iliad, Introduction and Book 1(all); Book 2, verses 1-493
January 28: The Iliad
Reading: The Iliad, Book 3, verses 121-244, 340-448; Book 6 (all); Excerpts on Oral Tradition
and Memory(WEBCT)
WEEK 3
February 2: Remembering Heroes: The Iliad
Reading: The Iliad, Book 7 (all); Book 9 (all)
February 4: How Are Heroes/Heroic or victim/tragic event Remembered?
Find Primary Sources Assignment(25 points): Based on your chronological and historical
period, pick a hero/heroic event or victim/tragic event that has been commemorated by successive
generations and find up to three sources of how it was remembered at a specific point in time. Use primary
source analysis for this assignment posted on WebCT.
Example: King Alexander of Yugoslavia was commemorated during the interwar period as
Unifier of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Photographic displays portrayed him as liberator king, and his
funeral rituals commemorated his Yugoslavism; newspaper articles after his assassination in 1934
remembered him as the First Yugoslav,
Reading Alert: Begin reading, Toni Morrison., Paradise, pp. 1-182; Assignment: For Paradise,
each student is assigned a specific narrator from the book.
Week 4
February 9: Gender, Commemoration and African American Experience
Reading(WEBCT): Chiji Akoma, The Trick of Narratives: History, Memory, and Performance
in Toni Morrisons Paradise, Oral Tradition, 15/1 (2000): 3-25; Toni Morrison, Memory, Creation, and
Writing, Thought: A Review of Culture and Idea 59, no. 235 (1984 Dec.): p. 385-390;
February 11: The Gendering of Narrative and Memories
Reading: Finish, Toni Morrison, Paradise, 185-318; (USE URL) Leslie A. Schwalm,
Agonizing Groans of Mothers and Slave-Scarred Veterans: The Commemoration of Slavery and
Emancipation, American Nineteenth Century History Vol. 9, No. 3(September 2008): 289304 URL:
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=8ca8bb00-661e-4c16-a525-500df24285ae
%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=3439949
7&db=khh

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WEEK 5 RESEARCHING YOUR FINAL PROJECT
February 16: Library day
February 18: Free Day
WEEK 6
FIRST PART OF PAPER ASSIGNMENT DUE FEBRUARY 26 BY 4 PM
February 23: Autobiography/Oral History
Reading(WEBCT): Penny Summerfield, Culture and Composure: Creating Narratives of the
Gendered Self in Oral History Interviews, Cultural and Social History 2004; 1: 6593
Analyzing Primary Sources: Assignment(WEBCT)(25 points): Pick from a number of the
posted oral histories/interviews and answer the posted questions to help you think about the relationship of
autobiography, memoirs, life stories, and oral histories to memory.
February 25: Images, Photography and Narrative
Reading(WEBCT): Susan Sontag, On Photography, pp. 1-19; Dora Apel, Cultural
Battlegrounds: Weimar Photographic Narratives of the War, New German Critique 76(Winter 1999): 4984 USE URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488658 OR READING RELATED TO STUDENT
PROJECT
II. RITUAL
WEEK 7
March 1: How Societies Remember(II)
Reading: Connerton, Commemorative ceremonies AND Bodily Practices, pp. 41-107;
Building Assignment: Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for one chapter.

Skill

March 3: Commemorative Ceremonies

Reading(WEBCT): David Cannadine, The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: the
British Monarchy and the Invention of Tradition, in Eric Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of
Tradition(Cambridge 1983)
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for one chapter.
WEEK 8
March 8: Lament as a cultural performance/ritual
Reading: The lliad; Book 24; WEBCT: Karen Weisman, Lamentation and Lament in the
Hebrew Bible, The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy
Reading in class(WEBCT): Selections from Book of Lamentation
March 10: Milman Parry Songs On-LineSouth Slavic Songs
Reading(URL): David Elmer, The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, Oral Tradition,
28/2 (2013):341-354, URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/oral_tradition/v028/28.2.elmer.html; Examples
from Milman Parry Collection(WEBCT)
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Analysis of Lament or South Slavic Song(WEBCT)
Break

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WEEK 9
March 22: Rituals of Mourning and Remembering
Reading: ARTICLE BASED ON STUDENT PROJECT
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for Article
March 24: Public Memory, Commemoration and Patriotism
Reading: ARTICLE BASED ON STUDENT PROJECT
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for Article
WEEK 10
March 29: Performing the Past
Reading: ARTICLE BASED ON STUDENT PROJECT
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for Article
March 31: Resistance to Collective Remembering
Reading(WEBCT): L. Zimmerman, Plains Indians and Resistance to Public Heritage
Commemoration of their Past, in Silverman, H. and Fairchild Ruggles, D. eds. Cultural Heritage and
Human Rights. Springer: New York, 2007: 144-158
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for Article
III. Landscape
WEEK 11
April 4: Landscape and Memory
Reading: Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Excerpts
April 6: Landscape and Ritual Space
Reading: The Iliad, Book 12, verses 1-40; Book 22, verses 1-411 and Jonas Grethlein. Memory
and Material Objects in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Journal of Hellenic Studies 128 (2008) 27-51. URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0075426900000045
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for Article
WEEK 12
Wednesday April 13 2016, 6 8pm; Field Trip to Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe. This
week CCA is displaying the collection of Jane Kimball who has amassed thousands of souvenirs, love
tokens, personalized trophies, and other examples of trench art made by soldiers on battlefields, in
hospitals, or at P.O.W. camps.
April 12: Materiality and Memory
Reading(URL): Nicholas Saunders, Crucifix, Calvary, and Cross: Materiality and Spirituality in
Great War Landscapes, World Archaeology, 35:1(The Social Commemoration of Warfare), pp. 7-21,
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0043824032000078045; (WEBCT)George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers:
Reshaping the Memory of the First World War, Chapter 6: The Appropriation of Nature, pp. 107-130
Skill Building Assignment(25 points): Turn in Secondary Source Analysis for one of the
articles/chapters
April 14: Day Off AND BEGIN READING: Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Place
WEEK 13
April 19: Memory Pieces and Footprints
Reading: Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Place, pp. ix-70

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April 21: Narrating and Remembering Landscapes
Reading: Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Place, pp. 71-152
WEEK 14
April 26: Architecture and Memory
Reading: W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz Naomi Stead, Architecture and memory in W. G. Sebalds
Austerlitz, Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 19 / Issue 01 / March 2015, pp 41 48; Link to
this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1359135515000263
April 28: Student Presentations
WEEK 15
May 3: Student Presentations
May 5: Student Presentations
WEEK 16
Paper Due: May 10

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Bokovoy

History 492

Pick One: Sites of Memory Projects

A. Project for Narrative and Ritual: Exploration of how a person, event, or object has been
remembered differently across a range of media and/or time.
Based on your chronological and historical period, your goal is to study the way something or
someone is represented and hence rememberedand to think hard about how the medium of expression
influences and shapes that representation/remembering. You are writing the history of how something or
someone is remembered historical. You will be asking the following questions:
What is the role of memory in pre-modern and modern cultures?
What are the mechanisms by which collective memory is created, maintained, communicated and
transformed?
What is the role of narrative forms (including the new media), rituals, and landscapes in shaping
historical consciousness and memory?
Who decides the official representations of the past in public monuments and commemorations?
And how are historical narratives influenced by the multiple ways in which the past has been
remembered, re-remembered, and deployed by various individuals, groups, and national
collectivities?
Instructions
The primary goal of this assignment is to allow you to do history the same way as historians do--to
examine primary and secondary sources in order to answer questions about the past. This assignment is
divided into three parts: 1) Selection of the person, event or object, a brief description of the event, why it
is remembered historically and by what groups and the second sources materials available; 2) Overview of
project with primary and secondary sources reviewed; 3) The paper.
Part I (50 points). Selection of Person, Event, or Object (3-4 pages, double-spaced); Due
Friday, February 26 by 4 pm.
In essay form, 1) provide a brief, but clear description of the person/event/object and its historical
significance. In order to provide a coherent and clear description, you must have examined closely at least
one secondary historical study(textbooks are not acceptable) and two scholarly articles that relates
specifically to your person/event/ object.; 2) Summarize briefly the content and major points of each of
the secondary sources by following the How to analyze a secondary source; and 3) Briefly answer how
the person/event/object is being represented, remembered, and/or commemorated.
Part II (100 points). Outline/Sketch out your project by providing answers to the questions above
based on primary and secondary sources reviewed(4-5 pages, double spaced); Due Friday, April 1 by 4
pm
In the sketch/outline, provide specific information about each primary source. What kind of
document is it? Who or what produced it and when? What questions above do your sources help answer
and why?
Part III (150 points). The Final Project(2000-2500 pages, double-spaced). First Draft due
Friday, April 29. Final Paper Due May 10 by 4 pm.

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B. Assignment For Landscape: Popular article on a campus or local memorial. For this assignment,
choose a memorial on campus or in Albuquerque, defining memorial loosely to include any of the
artifacts, buildings, place names, etc. that are intended, partially or in whole, to remember a person/s or
event. Your case study can range from small commemorative plaques on street corners, odd industrial ruins
lying around in town, major historic monuments, tombs, statues or some imaginary place about which there
are public rumors and urban legends.
Part I. (50 points). Selection of Memorial and its landscape(3-4 pages, double-spaced); Due Friday,
February 26 by 4 pm.
For this assignment, answer the following questions. 1. Where and what is the memorial? Visit
the memorial when you have at least half an hour to observe, and take careful notes. What do your eyes
take in first about the memorial? 3. Where do your eyes move next, and what draws your attention. 3Why
does it draw your attention? What seems most straightforward about the memorials message? What is
obscure, puzzling, confusing?
Once youve done an initial observation of the memorial itself, study its surroundings. What
direction does it face? What does it look out toward? What is in its background? What is the immediate
surrounding area like?
Then consider how the memorial speaks to its surroundings and is in turn shaped by them. What
effect do the surrounding grounds, other objects, etc. have on the memorial and its message? Why do you
think the memorial has this particular location and these particular surroundings?
How does the memorial write or create the memory of its occasion in a particular way; just how
does it tell the story of what it is remembering in a way that will be persuasive to future audiences? You
may want to take a photo of the memorial or to find a representation of it on the Webespecially since our
course focuses on the effects of media on representation and memory. Take your notes, photos, etc. with
you as you do a little digging into the history of the memorial.
Finally, your memorial is similar to others that have been studied thus it is important to read about
how others have analyzed such landscapes, thus find one secondary historical study(textbooks are not
acceptable) and two scholarly articles that relates specifically to your person/event/ object.; 2) Summarize
briefly the content and major points of each of the secondary sources by following the How to analyze a
secondary source and how it will begin to guide your research.
Part II. (100 points) Outline/Sketch out your project by looking for primary sources that provide
answers to the questions that were raised in your secondary sources. For example, who or what
commissioned the memorial and why? When was it proposed vs. when was it erected? Who/what group
designed it and for what purpose? When and what was the dedication ceremony like? Who attended? Are
there ongoing commemorations here?
Outline/Sketch out your project by providing answers to the questions above based on primary and
secondary sources reviewed(4-5 pages, double spaced); Due Friday, April 1 by 4 pm. For this research,
you are encouraged to do library or archival research about the monument and carry out informal
interviews with residents and locals to record particular memories, stories, imaginations attached to those
places or monuments.
Part III(150 points) Finally, write a 2000-2500 word article intended for a popular newspaper, magazine,
or journal about this memorial. First Draft due Friday, April 29. Final Paper Due May 10 by 4 pm.

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Citation Style(From the American Historical Review website)
The footnote(endnote) style used by the AHR generally follows the conventions recommended by The
Chicago Manual of Style. If you do not find your citation problem discussed here, please consult Chicago
or contact us for advice.
Placement of Notes. A footnote number should come at the end of a sentence or at least at the end of a
clause wherever possible. Footnote numbers always follow quoted or cited material; they should not be
placed after authors' names or other references preceding the cited matter.
Number and Length of Notes. An excessive number of notes can detract from your argument, and
lengthy notes make page layout difficult. Space at the foot of the page is limited, so please combine notes
where you can and keep them as concise as possible.
Acknowledgments. Please use an unnumbered note, placed at either the beginning or the end of the
text, to provide any desired reference to previous forms of the article (e.g., a paper delivered at the annual
meeting of the AHA) and to acknowledge the assistance of colleagues or grants from foundations (be sure
to include the year and number of the grant). Do not number it as a footnote.
Citing Books. The first citation of a book should take the following format:
Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, 1994).
Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick,
N.J., 1953-55).
Jules Romains, Verdun, trans. Gerard Hopkins (1938; repr. ed., London, 2000).
Subsequent citations should take the following format:
Weinberg, A World at Arms, 132-33.
Lincoln, The Collected Works, 3: 46.
Romains, Verdun, 101-02.
Note that only the last name of the author is provided in a subsequent reference, along with a shortened
version of the title. The publication information is not repeated. The short title should use words in
sequence from the main title only. In shortening foreign language titles, be careful not to omit a word that
changes the capitalization or governs the case ending of a word retained in the short title.
Citing Book Chapters. A book chapter or essay should take the following format:
John H. Hanson, "Islam and African Societies," in Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O'Meara, eds., Africa,
3rd ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 97-114.
Subsequent citations should take the following format:
Hanson, "Islam and African Societies," 98.

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Citing Articles. A journal or newspaper article should take the following format:
Christopher Steiner, "Another Image of Africa: Toward an Ethnohistory of European Cloth Marketed in
West Africa, 1873-1960," Ethnohistory 32, no. 2 (1985): 91-110.
"La Muse de Paris," La Fronde, July 11, 1898, 11.
Subsequent citations should take the following format:
Steiner, "Another Image of Africa," 97, 99.
"La Muse de Paris," 11.
Citing Unpublished Materials. Information from archives can be cited in order either from specific to
general or from general to specific; we simply ask that you be consistent.
General to specific: Archivio di Stato, Venice, Avogaria di Comun, Balla d'Oro (hereafter, BO) 163,
fols. 216r.
Specific to general: Minutes, July 13, 1897, Special Committee on Pensions, City Club of Chicago,
Box 2, p. 216, Archives of the City Club, Chicago.
Citing Classical, Literary, and Legal Works. We prefer to spell out rather than abbreviate, in order to
be as clear as possible for a general audience. Thus Thucydides 2.40 is preferable to Thucy. 2.40, and
Faerie Queene, 2.8.12 is preferable to FQ 2.8.12. Please note our preference for Arabic rather than Roman
numerals.
Legal case names are italicized: United States v. Dennis, 183 F.2nd 201 (2nd Cir. 1950).
Abbreviations.
The following abbreviations (and, where applicable, their plurals) are acceptable for use in your notes:
bk., cf., chap., diss., ed. ("editor" or "edited by"), e.g., et al., etc., fig., fol., ibid., i.e., n.d., no., n.p. ("no
place"; "no page"), n.s., par., pt., repr., rev., sec., vol. We do not use op. cit. or loc. cit.; please use author's
last name and shortened title for subsequent citations of a fully cited work. We do not use f. or ff. ("and
following") or passim; please provide the actual page range numbers for the reference. Please use 2nd and
3rd, not 2d and 3d.

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Secondary Source Questions and Analysis
1. Title. From the title, what does the author promise to discuss? (Be sure to look at book title and then
chapter title for reading which is excerpted for larger work.)
2. Preliminaries. Read the first two or three paragraphs of the introduction and then the concluding
paragraphs.
a. What is the topic (the site of memory, the key people, key events, key subjects, time period
covered) of the piece?
b. How does the author approach memory in the article? Think about how author defines or not
define memory. What theorists, main practitioners of memory studies, scholars of war and/or gender are
referenced?
c. What is the authors thesis? To identify the thesis, ask yourself the following questions: What
is the author setting out to prove? What are the major themes?
3. Organization. How does the author intend to organize his argument, i.e., what is the order that she is
going to present his ideas?
4. Thesis. A thesis is an argument. Is this a good argument? Does the author support the big argument
with smaller arguments? What are these small arguments, i.e., argued paragraph by paragraph. Does the
author connect the smaller arguments to the larger one? How? Does the author prove her thesis?
5. Sources.
a. What types of sources does the author uses?
b. Identify two examples of the author using specific primary sources to prove a point, an
argument. For each example look at the text, the context, and the foot(endnotes) and describe the type of
source used by the author. Does this source provide adequate information and evidence for the historian to
make the argument? What methods or theories does the author use to interpret these sources? Can you
read them differently and if so, what methodology or theory can you use?
c. Identify one example of the author using a specific secondary source(look at date of
publication). How does this historian use the source? To support her argument? To dispute a conclusion
reached by another historian?
6. Motives. Why did the author write this article/book? Is she talking to other historians and explaining
why they might be wrong about this topic? Who are these historians? Is he adding additional information
to the historical record? Did other historians miss something? Who are these historians? Do you detect
any ideological bent or bias?
7. Other Readings. How does this article contribute to the scholarship on this subject and how is it similar
or dissimilar to other readings this week?
8. Summary. Take notes as you read, go back over these notes, and write a three to four sentence
synopsis of the article.