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Forgetting Fascism, Remembering Communism: Memory in Modern Europe

Module description

This module will examine the ways in which European memory has been constructed since the Second World War. It will partly focus on countries, from Spain to Germany to Russia, which have attempted to ‘come to terms’ with their experience of Fascism and/ or Communism. It will examine the way in which histories are remembered, remoulded or forgotten when one regime collapses and another takes its place. It will address how the memory of the past is constructed at many levels: through transnational advocacy, state commemorations, trials and funerals; through novels, films, buildings, statues and everyday objects. It will also place European memory politics in global context, exploring both the differences from, but also connections to, other ways of remembering difficult or violent pasts across the world.

Module aims - intentions of the module

For the most part we will use focussed (and often national) case studies, to a) historicise this process: to understand how Europeans came to believe it necessary to remember their ‘difficult pasts’ and b) to explore the competition and contestation over which ‘difficult pasts’ were the most important, how these should be remembered, and – in some cases – whether these pasts should be remembered at all.

This module aims to help you develop your skills in researching, interpreting, and analysing both primary and secondary material.  It provides you with an opportunity to explore broadly the rich and fascinating ‘history of memory’ of modern Europe, and it helps you to develop the depth of understanding you will require to study more specialised areas of history.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. A detailed knowledge of the main themes in the subject, together with a very close knowledge of the areas selected for essay and presentation work
• 2. Ability to trace the changing nature of, and approaches to, memory in modern Europe

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Ability to analyse the key developments in a complex and alien political and social environment
• 4. Ability to handle profoundly different approaches to history in a deeply contested area
• 5. Ability to understand and deploy complex political terminology in a comprehensible manner

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Independent study and group work, including the presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 6. Ability to digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 7. Ability to present arguments orally, and to work in a group

Syllabus plan

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Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• European Memory Cultures in Global Context
• Forgetting Nazism
• Communist memory cultures
• Holocaust Memory in West and Eastern Europe
• Contesting European Memory: the Holocaust, Gulag and Colonialism
• Film and Memory
• Sites of Memory
• History on Trial: Perpetrators in Court
• Everyday nostalgia
• Populism and the Challenge to Liberal Memory

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi past: united Germany and the legacy of the Third Reich (Routledge, 2001)
• Peter Novick, The Holocaust and collective memory: the American experience (Bloomsbury, 2000)
• Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable past in the Federal Republic of Germany (University of California Press, 2001)
• Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives Of Dead Bodies: Reburial And Postsocialist Change (Columbia University Press, 1999)
• Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims (Cornell University Press, 1996)
• Jan Werner Muller (ed.), Memory and Power in Post-War Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
• Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille (eds.), Post-Communist Nostalgia (Berghahn, 2012).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11599 

Key words search

Fascism; Communism; Eastern Europe