Troubled Pasts and Visual Cultural: Comparative Models from Providence to Pretoria

This course examines the intersections of visual culture, commemorative politics, and individual and collective memories to analyze the politics of memory. We will look at debates over formal and informal engagements with the memory of three traumatic events: the "Dirty War" in Argentina, South African apartheid, and September 11th, 2001 in the US. Looking at the past as contested ground we will explore the challenges, ethics, and controversies around representing these events across a variety of mediums including film, art, music, and memorials. This class will be of interest to students of visual culture, cultural politics, and memory studies.