Europe's Recent History
Theories, Methods, and Topics
Winter 2004
History Department
CEU
Ph. D. Seminar, 2 Credits
Open to M.A. students with the instructor's approval
Sorin Antohi
CEU University Professor
History Department
Fifteen years after the annus mirabilis, 1989, the field of recent history is thriving: Central and Eastern European researchers (who wish and are able to do so) enjoy complete freedom of expression; most archives, previously sealed off, started to leak sources; the activists of social memory (the "memorians") are competing among themselves, as well as with politicians, media personalities, spin doctors, and professional historians over the (re)writing of history and over the normative (re)shaping of social memory; Western European researchers look more systematically eastwards, beyond the symbolic borders and cognitive mappings of the Cold War, after having spent the last three decades on the critical assessment of their own recent pasts (a process which Germans aptly call Vergangenheitsbewältigung), ranging from the latter's empirical reconstruction ot its postmodernist deconstruction.
Originally prompted by the moral and ethical necessity of looking back critically at the tragedies of the 1940s, as well as by the practical concerns of the post-WWII social pacification and democratization of Western Europe, this academic field has come to encompass the whole twentieth century and the entire continent. Over the last few years, a comparative perspective has slowly emerged, and attempts to overcome the various national and regional experiences and their corresponding academic canons have become more frequent and increasingly persuasive. Beyond l'histoire du temps présent, history of the present , Zeitgeschichte, the more usual contemporary history, and similar notions that stem from and capture a variety of local contexts, one has to be able to develop a transnational core of theories, methods, and topics.
This is the task of our seminar.
Course Requirements
Your progress in the course will be evaluated as follows:
Midterm Paper25% of the overall grade
Term Paper50%
Class Participation25%
Class participation means regular attendance, in-class comments and questions related to the weekly topics and readings, submissions of questions for and oral interventions in the final colloquium. The midterm is a seven-page essay related to one of the course topics; it is due in the beginning of the sixth week. The term paper is a fifteen-page piece on a topic suggested by the student and accepted by the instructor.
Required Readings
This is the absolute minimum. More readings will be suggested for each session, and in connection with students' research projects, in class and during the instructor's office hours (Wednesdays, 11-1).
Sorin Antohi, Vladimir Tismaneanu, eds., Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath. Budapest-New York: CEU Press, 2000, 2002.
Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural Hisrory of the GDR. New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999.
Ian Kershaw, Moshe Lewin, eds., Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Jay Winter, Emmanuel Sivan, eds., War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Course Agenda
One: Introduction. Mapping the Field of Recent History: From National to Transnational Research
(The Reader includes a list of relevant institutions.)
Two: Memory and History: Distinctions, Interactions, Confusions. Retroactive Justice
Readings:
Patrick H. Hutton, "Placing Memory in Contemporary Historiography", in Hutton, History as an Art of Memory, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1993, pp. 1-26, 169-175 (notes).
Peter Burke, "History as Social Memory", in Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997, pp. 43-59.
Paul Ricoeur, "Entre la mémoire et l'histoire", Tr@nsit-Virtuelles Forum, Nr. 22/2002.
Three: The Making and Management of Social Memory: How, Why, and What Societies Remember. The 'File'
Readings:
Jay Winter, Emmanuel Sivan, "Setting the Framework", Winter and Sivan, eds., op. cit., pp. 6-39.
Pierre Nora, "The Reasons for the Current Upsurge in Memory", Tr@nsit-Virtuelles Forum, Nr. 22/2002.
Lawrence E. Sullivan, "Memory Distortion and Anamnesis: A View from the Human Sciences", in Daniel L. Schacter, ed., Memory Distortion. How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1995, pp. 387-397.
Four: Objects of History, Objects of Memory: Fascism/Nazism and Communism. Comparisons?
Readings:
Ian Kershaw, Moshe Lewin, "The Regimes and Their Dictators: Perspectives of Comparison", in Kershaw, Lewin, eds., op. cit., pp. 1-25.
Martin Malia, "Foreword: The Uses of Atrocity", from Stéphane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Charles S. Maier, "Hot Memory...Cold Memory: On the Political Half-Life of Fascist and Communist Memory", Tr@nsit-Virtuelles Forum, Nr. 22/2002.
Five: Theology and Politics in the Recent Past
Readings:
Sabrina Petra Ramet, Social Currents in Eastern Europe. The Sources and Consequences of the Great Transformation. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995, pp. 155-177 + notes 511-517.
Six: Sociologies of the Recent Past: Social Contract? Totalitarianism, Dictatorship, Authoritarianism. Social Mobility, Social Structure.
Readings:
Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989, Chapter 9, "Beyond Failed Totalitarianism", pp. 224-248.
Seven: Anthropologies of the Recent Past: The New Man
Readings:
Alain Besancon, The Intellectual Origins of Leninism , translated by Sarah Matthews. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981, Chapter 7, "The New Man", pp. 113-125 + notes (pp. 298-299).
Eight: Cultural and Intellectual Histories of the Recent Past: 'Resistance Through Culture'?
Readings:
Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989, Chapter 8, "The Politics of Culture", pp. 193-223.
Sorin Antohi, "Commuting to Castalia: Noica's 'School', Culture and Power in Communist Romania", Introduction to Gabriel Liiceanu, The Pÿltiniÿ Diary, translated by J. Brown, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000, pp. vii-xxiv.
Nine: Logocracy: Ideology, Discourse, and Politics
Readings:
Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, translated by Jane Zielonko, Penguin Books, 1981, Chapter III, "Ketman", pp. 54-81.
Ten: Radical Politics: Dissent , Resistance, Revolt, Revolution
Readings:
Zygmunt Bauman, "Intellectuals in East-Central Europe: Continuity and Change", in Eastern European Politics and Societies, 1, 2, 1987, pp. 162-186.
Eleven: Distancing Recent Pasts: From Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the Mnemonic Canons of Post-Communism
Readings:
Wulf Kansteiner, "Mandarins in the Public Sphere. Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Paradigm of Social History in the Federal Republic of Germany", German Politics and Society, 17, 52, Fall 1999, pp. 84-120.
Jacques Rupnik, "The Politics of Coming to Terms with the Communist Past", Tr@nsit-Virtuelles Forum, Nr. 22, 2002.
Twelve: Final Colloquium.