This calendar includes a list of suggested readings and activities, but we may adjust it based on our discussions, needs, and interests.

• Have you found an article you’d love to discuss? Let’s add it or replace one of the suggested readings.
• Know of a digital memory project worth exploring? Share it with us, and we’ll find a place for it in the syllabus.
• Think the organization of topics could be improved? We can rearrange the schedule as needed.

Your input is encouraged and welcomed!

February 5- Contexts

• Introductions
• What do we mean by “memory”? What are “Memory Studies”?
• Discussion of syllabus and class routines

February 12- No class (Lincoln’s Birthday)

February 19- Why “memory”?

Readings & assignments

• Choose a day to lead one reading discussion during the semester. In the same document, choose a day to discuss a digital project and select which projects you would like to review.
• Read these four texts and annotate two of them with Hypothes.is:
  
  • Blight, D. (2009). The memory boom: Why and why now? In P. Boyer & J. Wertsch (Eds.), Memory in Mind and Culture (pp. 238-251). Cambridge University Press.
  • Erll, A. (2011). The invention of cultural memory. A short history of memory studies. In Memory in Culture (pp. 13–37). Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Klein, N. (Oct. 5, 2024). How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war. The Guardian.
  • Rigney, A. (2018). Remembering hope. Transnational activism beyond the traumatic. Memory Studies, 11(3), 368–380.
• Watch Miriam Posner’s video “How did you make that?” . Then, read these two reviews prepared by past students of Digital Memories and explore the linked projects. These reviews will help inform your own evaluations
  • From Volume I: Imperial War Museums
  • From Volume II: Slave Voyages
• If you feel ready, begin working on your first project review (due on March 5). 

February 26- Memory in the digital ecosystem (I)

Readings:

Read these three texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Mandolessi, S. (2023). The digital turn in memory studies. Memory Studies, 16(6), 1513–1528. 
• Özhan Koçak, D. (2020). Collective memory and digital practices of remembrance. In Friese, H., Nolden, M., Rebane, G., Schreiter, M. (eds.). Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten (pp. 55-66). Springer VS. 
• Burkey, B. (2020). Repertoires of remembering: A conceptual approach for studying memory practices in the digital ecosystem. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 44(2), 178–197.

Read these two reviews prepared by past students of Digital Memories and explore the linked projects. These reviews will help inform your own evaluations:

• • From Volume III: Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant Garde
  • From Volume IV: Chicana por mi Raza

Work on your first project review (due on March 5). 

March 6 (Thursday)– Memory in the digital ecosystem (II)

First project review due today.

Read these three texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Liebermann, Y. (2021). Born digital: The Black lives matter movement and memory after the digital turn. Memory Studies, 14(4), 713-732.
• Ristić, K. (2024). Far-right digital memory activism: Transnational circulation of memes and memory of Yugoslav wars. Memory Studies, 17(4), 741-756. 
• Ureta Marín, C. and Chilet Bustamante, M. (2022). The city as text. A kilometric scroll through the memory of the uprising in Chile, 2019. In Francesco, G., Bollini, L. (eds.), Pages on Art and Design, 15 (23), 64-85.
• Shehadeh, H. (2023). Palestine in the Cloud: The construction of a digital floating homeland. Humanities, 12(4), 1-18.

Begin working on your second project review (due on March 19).

March 12- Archives and protocols (I)

Readings:

Read these three texts. Annotate two of them with Hypothesis. 

• Baines, J. (2020). Archiving. In Baker, M., Blaagaard, B., Jones, H. & Pérez-González, L., Routledge encyclopedia of citizen media. Routledge.
• Caswell, M. (2021). Introduction and Imagining liberatory memory work. In Urgent archives: Enacting liberatory memory work (pp. 1-22 and 93-112). Routledge. (Note: See the review of SAAD in Volume 1 of Digital Memory Project Reviews).
• Hassan, L. (2025, March 4). Archiving Gaza: The race to save evidence of war crimes and mass destruction. Drop Site News. 

Work on your second project review (due on March 19).

March 19- Archives and protocols (II) – Dédalo guests

Second project review due today.

Readings:

Read these three texts. Annotate two of them with Hypothesis. 

• De Fazio, G. (2023). Can critical digital archives address “archival amnesty” toward lynching? The Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia Project. In Nunes, C., & Gustavson, A., Transforming the Authority of the Archive: Undergraduate Pedagogy and Critical Digital Archives. Lever P (pp. 58-81).
• Lee Brown, M., Whaanga, H. and Lewis, J. E. (2023). Relation-oriented AI: Why indigenous protocols matter for the digital humanities. In Gold, M. and Klein, L. (ends.), Debates in the Digital Humanities 2023.
• Agostinho, D. (2019). Archival encounters: Rethinking access and care in digital colonial archives. Archival Science, 19(2), 141-165.

Begin working on your third project review (due on April 2).

March 26- Digital oral history 

• Readings:

Read these four texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Thomson, A. (2007). Four paradigm transformations in oral history. The Oral History Review, 34(1), 49-71.
• Smyth, H. K. Nyhan, J. and Flinn, A. (2023). Exploring the possibilities of Thomson’s fourth paradigm transformation—The case for a multimodal approach to digital oral history? Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38(2), 720–736,
• Sloan, S. (2014). Swimming in the exaflood: Oral history as information in the digital age. In D. Boyd & M. Larson (Eds.), Oral history and digital humanities. Voice, access, and engagement (pp. 175-186). Palgrave Macmillan. 
• Tureby, M. T. and Wagrell, K. (2022). Crisis documentation and oral history: Problematizing collecting and preserving practices in a digital world. The Oral History Review, 49(2), 346-376.

April 2- Transcultural, transnational, transmedia memory practices

• Third and last project review due today

Readings:

Read these three texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Keightley E. (2022). Rethinking technologies of remembering for a postcolonial world. Memory, Mind & Media 1(17), 1-15.
• Kennedy, R. & Graefenstein, S. (2019). From the transnational to the intimate: Multidirectional memory, the holocaust and colonial violence in Australia and beyond. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 32, 403–422.
• Rappaccioli, E. Y. (2022). AMA y No Olvida. Collectivizing memory against impunity: Transmedia memory practices, modular visibility, and activist participatory design in Nicaragua. International Journal of Communication 16, 309-330.
• Optional: Enzo Traverso, historian: “Germany is being complicit in a genocide in Gaza.” El País, July 2, 2024.

April 9- Project proposals

No readings assigned for this week. Instead:

• Prepare your project proposal and share it with me via Google Drive by April 1. Your proposal is a work-in-progress, but it should show deep thinking, good planning, and awareness of available resources.
• Please complete these midterm evaluations (both are short!):
  • Your midterm self-evaluation (not anonymous)
  • Your midterm course evaluation (anonymous)

April 16- Spring Break

April 23- Gender, Queer witnessing

Readings:

Read these four texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Watson, A., Kirby, E., Churchill, B., Robards, B., and LaRochelle, L. (2024). What matters in the queer archive? Technologies of memory and Queering the Map. The Sociological Review, 72(1), 99-117.
• Cowan, T. L. and Rault, J. (2018). Onlining queer acts: Digital research ethics and caring for risky archives. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 28(2), 121-142.
• De Kosnik, A. (2016). Print fans versus net fans : women’s cultural memory at the threshold of new media. In Rogue archives : Digital cultural memory and media fandom (pp. 193-220). The MIT Press.
• Chidgey, R. (2012). Hand-made memories: Remediating cultural memory in DIY feminist networks. In E. Zobl & R. Drüeke (Eds.), Feminist media: Participatory spaces, networks and cultural citizenship (pp. 87–97). Verlag. 

April 30- Intergenerational memory

Readings:

Read these three texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Hirsch, M. (2008). The generation of postmemory. Poetics Today, 29(1), 103-128.
• Spencer, Z. & Perlow, O. (2018). Sassy mouths, unfettered spirits, and the neo-lynching of Korryn Gaines and Sandra Bland: Conceptualizing post traumatic slave master syndrome and the familiar “policing” of Black women’s resistance in twenty-first-century America. Feminism, race, transnationalism, 17(1), 163-183. [If interested, check the concept of “post traumatic slave syndrome,” by Joy DeGruy (5 min.) and Joy DeGruy’s website.]
• Marshall, D. J.,  Smaira, D. and Staeheli, L. D.  (2022). Intergenerational place-based digital storytelling: a more-than-visual research method. Children’s Geographies, 20(1), 109-121.

May 7- Memory and digital games

Readings:

Read these three texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Kansteiner, W. (2017). Transnational holocaust memory, digital culture and the end of reception studies. In T. Sindbæk Andersen & B. Törnquist-Plewa, The twentieth century in European memory. Transcultural mediation and Reception (pp. 305–343). Brill. 
• Boom, K. H., Ariese, C. E., van den Hout, B., Mol, A. A., and Politopoulos, A. (2020). Teaching through play: Using video games as a platform to teach about the past. In Hageneuer, S. (ed.), Communicating the Past in the digital Age. Proceedings of the International
  Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12–13 October 2018), (pp. 27-44). Ubiquity p. 
• Pötzsch, H. & Šisler, V. (2019). Playing cultural memory: Framing history in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Czechoslovakia 38–89: Assassination. Games and Culture, 14(1), 3-25.

May 14- Trauma

Readings:

Read the following four texts and annotate two of them with Hypothesis:

• Menyhér, A. (2020). Trauma studies in the Digital Age. In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma (240-256).
• Liu, C. (2021, December 6). What is trauma in a Digital Age? U of New England, ME.
• Recuber, T. (2012).  The prosumption of commemoration: Disasters, digital memory banks, and online collective memory. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(4), 531– 549.
• Kansteiner, W. & Weilnböck, H. (2008). Against the concept of cultural trauma. In Erll & A. Nünning, The invention of cultural memory: A short history of memory studies (pp. 229-240). Walter de Gruyter.

May 21- Project presentations

What is left?

• Complete your course project by May 28 (please include the link in your self-evaluation), Click here are to read about what I will look at when evaluating your project. 
• Final self-evaluation
• Final course evaluation (anonymous, short and optional)