OSPCPTWN 90: Public Memory Research

Instructor: TBD

The contemporary politics surrounding knowledge claims and representation related to the memory-work and memory-making of spaces, places, identities, and events in a country as diverse as South Africa has produced both deep controversy and heightened conflict. Instructive examples of these very moments of rupture and contestation between publics on the one hand, and museum praxis on the other, will be used to train students in appropriate and portable frames of ethics, criticality, and curation. Stated differently, students will be made to understand complicated ideas that span ‘cultural appropriation’, ‘hybrid objects’ and other high-level thoughts that will prepare them to read, write and create in and for the cultural space of South Africa and crucially well-beyond, so that they can develop as highly-informed critics and researchers with a global perspective of the pedagogy of public memory. 

Units: 5 | Grading Basis: TBD | Component: Seminar

*All courses are subject to change.