PLAN DE COURS
« I REMEMBER »:
INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY
IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION (19TH20TH CENTURIES)
Teacher: Sarah Juliette Sasson
([email protected]/[email protected])
Academic Year 2015/2016: Spring semester
COURSE SESSION
SESSION 1: INTRODUCTION: THEORY OF MEMORY
Our first two sessions are devoted to reading theoretical texts on the question of memory and attempting to
frame this concept within a larger historical and literary context. Memory does have different meanings at
different moments of history. It also covers different types of experiences, ranging from a unique, individual
phenomenon to a sociological, collective one.

Sigmund Freud, Selected Works, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,
James Strachey Ed. In collaboration with Anna Freud, 1999.

Mary Caruthers, The Book of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008.

Maurice Halbwachs. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Vintage Books, 1982.
SESSION 2: FRAMING THE QUESTION OF MEMORY
Defining memory, in particular collective memory, demands that we make several important distinctions.
One is Nora’s emphasis on the difference between memory and history. Another is Said’s, which focuses on
the necessity of grounding memory in a specific place.

Pierre Nora. Realms of Memory, Columbia University Press, 1996–1998.

Edward Said. “Invention, Memory and Place,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter 2000).
The next three sessions focus on the importance of witnessing and on the definition and ethics of bearing
witness.
SESSION 3: ON BEARING WITNESS
Bearing witness is quintessential to modern literature. The genre of the memoir has emerged as the forces of
history erupted in a previously stable world. We will distinguish between different literary subgenres
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(autobiography, memoir, and mémoires) before examining several examples of memoirs and their impact on
collective memory.

François René de Chateaubriand. Memoirs (Mémoires d’outre-tombe), Nabu Press, 2010.

Marguerite Duras, The War, a Memoir. New Press, 1994.

Edwige Dandicat, On 9/11’s tenth anniversary, The New Yorker, September 2011.
SESSION 4: THE WITNESS AS SENTINEL
Following our discussion on the importance of bearing witness, here we examine two examples where
literature and art are used to make a strong --provocative even--statement about cultural memory.

Roberto Bolaño. Nazi Literature in the Americas. New Directions Paperbook, 2009.

Jean-Louis Faure, Sculpture. Paris: Editions de Fallois, 2009. Also available on www.emamo.free.fr
Paper number 1 due. Abstract for group presentation due.
SESSION 5: FRAUD AND MEMORY
Bearing witness supposes that the narrator is telling the truth. What happens when this genre prerequisite is
missing? In this session, we examine two recent, infamous examples of literary fraud and their impact on
cultural memory.

Misha Defonseca. Micha: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Survivre avec les loups, Paris: Robert Laffont,
1997).

Benjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments. Memories of a Wartime Childhood. New York: Schocken Books,
1996.

Ross Chambers, “Orphaned Memories, Foster-Writing, Phantom Pain: The Fragments Affair,” in:
Nancy Miller and Jason Tougaw (eds.) Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community, Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
SESSION 6: CAN ONE REMEMBER COLLECTIVELY?
Can literature specifically reflect or express a collectively-shared memory? Grass and Perec answer this
elusive question through different literary processes.

Günter Grass, Dog Years. Harcourt Press, 1965.

Georges Perec, I Remember (Je me souviens). Personal Translation.
Abstract for research paper due.
SESSION 7: WORKSHOP / STUDENTS’ PROJECTS
Students present their group projects.
SESSION 8: WORKSHOP / STUDENTS’ PROJECTS
Students present their group projects.
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SESSION 9: NARRATING THE UNSPEAKABLE: THE EXAMPLE OF RWANDA
The question of accounting for dramatic, unspeakable events has haunted modern literature and poetry from
Theodor Adorno to Paul Celan to Primo Levi. Taking the example of the recent Rwandan genocide, we will
examine the impact of different literary genres on the reader and confront fictional vs. non-fictional accounts
of events.

Gil Courtemanche, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, 2013.

Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season. New York: FSG, 2005.

Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families. New
York, FSG, 1998.
SESSION 10: 9/11 AS COLLECTIVE CATASTROPHE
Many have described 9/11 as the quintessential collective catastrophe because it has been experienced
worldwide through the media. As such, it is worth exploring from the viewpoint of collective memory and the
cultural responses this event has provoked.

Cole, Teju. Open City. New York: Random House, 2011.

Safran Foer, Jonathan. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New York: Mariner Books, 2006.

Wisława Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11,” Monologue of a Dog; New York: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.
SESSION 11: TOWARDS A GLOBALIZED MEMORY: ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHES AND THEIR
REPRESENTATION
Recent environmental catastrophes have contributed to transforming memory into a forced collective,
transcultural phenomenon. Three examples borrowed from French, Haitian and Russian literature
emphasize how such experiences transcend cultural affiliations in a new way.

Emmanuel Carrère. Lives Other than my Own. New York: Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt, 2011.

Dany Laferrière, Tout bouge autour de moi. (Personal translation: unavailable in English).

Svetlana Alexievitch. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Dalkey Archive
Press, 2005.
Final (research) paper due.
SESSION 12: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MEMORY
At the other end of the spectrum of memory stands amnesia. Alzheimer’s disease, which has been
represented time and again as a terrifying illness also serves as a metaphor for our time. Our obsession with
remembering and archiving can be understood here as a vestigial form of our inability to retain memory in
our lives. This final text will allow us to conclude our discussion by placing the semester’s readings into
perspective.

Alice Munro, “The Bear Came over the Mountain,” Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship,
Marriage: Stories, New York, Vintage, 2002.
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ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Huyssen, Andreas. Twilight Memories. Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York: Routledge,
1995.

Jeannelle, Jean-Louis. Ecrire ses mémoires au XXe siècle. Déclin et renouveau. Paris : Gallimard,
2008. (In French only).

Klüger, Ruth. Landscapes of Memory. Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2004.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. Stories. New York: Vintage, 2009.

Levi Primo, If this is a Man (Survival in Auschwitz). New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. London: Penguin Classics, 1966.

Olick Jeffrey K., Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy Daniel, eds. The Collective Memory Reader, Oxford
University Press, 2011

Perec, Georges. W or the Memory of Childhood. London: Harvill, 1988.

Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Vintage Books, 1982.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions. The Echo Library, 2010.

Sasson, Sarah Juliette. “Nabokov, Nemirovsky: Poétique de l’étranger,” Cadernos de Literatura
Comparada Margarida Losa, no. 14/15, “Textos e Mundos em Deslocação,” Afrontamento Editions,
2006.

Schachter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory. The Brain, the Mind, the Past. New York: Basic Book,
1996.

Scribner, Charity. Requiem for Communism. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2003.

Yates, Frances, The Art of Memory. London: Pimlico, 1994.

Yerushalmi, Yosef Haym. Zakhor, Jewish History and Jewish Memory. University of Washington
Press, 1982.
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