War and the Politics of Cultural Memory

The past several decades have seen the rise of a veritable memory industry devoted to the memorializing of wars. This seminar focuses on a selection of British, European, and American novels, memoirs, and films that self-consciously engage in remembering a range of conflicts, from the First World War to the “War on Terror,” alongside a relevant body of theoretical writings. Our aim is to think in detail, and collectively, about the political stakes of such literary remembrances and to develop together a “contrapuntal” approach that engages with the collaborative tensions between Anglo-European, postcolonial, and US minority modes of memory.