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Collective Memory & Transitional Justice

Vak
2020-2021

Admission requirements

Admitted to the MAIR programme: Conflict Studies, Culture & Politics, and Global Order tracks possible.

Students are required to attend and participate actively in class, to complete an essay and to do a class presentation based on seminar readings or participate in moot court.

Description

In post-conflict situations (eg. after declonisation or wars), the processes of ‘righting’ historical wrongs and the restitution of grievances can function as both a point of connection and a point of contention in the emergence of a shared historical narrative. This course is aimed at identifying the ways in which demands for historical and thus transitional justice are framed and how procedures for reconciliation function with regard to the construction of shared historical narratives. The course will answer such questions as: How does transitional justice function? When and how have demands for historical justice been addressed? How, and with what influences, does the pursuit of justice, in a variety of forms, impact the construction of shared narratives and collective memory? And what mechanisms play a role in creating such collective memories?

The course will tackle these questions by examining the discourse of justice at the local level on a case-by-case basis through a series of comparative case studies. In each case, students will receive a lecture and debate the broader concepts in a seminar following the lecture.

The primary goals of the course are to provide a solid grounding in the concept of historical justice, to examine the practical aspects of creating historical narratives/collective memories, and to examine both the potential as well as the limitations of historical reconciliation in the broader context of peace-building and reconciliation processes.

Students are expected to question the relationship between the socio-historical process of justice and reconciliation and the representation of such processes in the construction of a shared narrative or memory of a particular conflict. The main goals of the course for students are to become familiar with how historical justice can function to both develop a historical narrative and to help or hinder the process of reconciliation, to delve into each post-conflict scenario and identify the different forms of historical narrative at work, to compare and contrast how the pursuit of historical justice works in different ways in different contexts and to identify the ways in which justice and reconciliation shapes discourses, historical narratives and collective memories.

Course objectives

The primary goals of the course are to provide a solid grounding in the concept of how collective memories have been and are constructed, to examine the practical aspects of solving the political, social and ethical dilemmas that arise, and to probe both the potential as well as the limitations of historical understandings of the problems and issues of transitional/global justice.

Students are expected to question the relationship between the historical processes and the representation of such processes in the construction of global orders. The main goals of the course for students are to become familiar with how historical understandings of issues and problems of global justice can function to both develop solutions and foster dialogue, to diversity constructions of the North-South relationship and the ways in which it manifests itself and to reinterpret the ways in which issues of global justice are infused with a variety of internationalisms.

Timetable

Visit MyTimetable.

Mode of instruction

Lecture and Seminar

Assessment method

Students are required to attend and participate actively in class, to complete an essay and to do a class presentation/moot court. The final grade is divided as follows: class participation (25%), essay of 3.000 words (40%), and class presentation/moot court (35%).

The participation grade depends on the careful reading of course texts, attendance, and the active involvement in class discussions. Students are expected to contribute on a regular basis to discussions and engage with the course texts.

To complete the final mark, please take notice of the following:
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average.

If necessary, the resit will be arranged by handing out an additional written assignment pending the individual situation and in consultation with the lecturer.

How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.

Reading list

Core Texts:

  • Paige Arthur (ed.) Identities in Transition, Challenges for Transitional Justice in Divided Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

  • Barkan, Elazar, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

Selected Course Readings:

  • Abazović, Dino; Velikonja, Mitja (eds.) On and Beyond Post-Yugoslavia: New Cultural and Political Perspectives (London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2014).

  • Adwan, Sami (et. al.) Zoom in, Palestinian Refugees of 1948, Remembrances (The Hague, Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation, Series 2, Republic of Letters).

  • Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. (London and New York: Verso, 1991).

  • Assmann, Jan, and John Czaplicka. “Collective memory and cultural identity.” New German Critique (1995): 125-133.

  • Assmann, Aleida ‘Memory, Individual and Collective’, in Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 210-224.

  • Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil (New York: Penguin, 2006).

  • Banac, Ivo, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984).

  • Confino, Alon. “Collective memory and cultural history: problems of method.” The American Historical Review (1997): 1386-1403.

  • Darko Gravilovic & Vjekoslav Perica (eds.) Political myths In The Former Yugoslavia And Successor States. A Shared Narrative (The Hague: Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation Series 1 Republic of Letters.) Available free online on www.historyandreconciliation.org

  • Felman, Shoshana. “Theatres of justice: Arendt in Jerusalem, the Eichmann trial, and the redefinition of legal meaning in the wake of the Holocaust.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 1.2 (2000).

  • Gluck, Carol. “Operations of memory: ‘comfort women’ and the world.” Ruptured histories: war, memory, and the post-cold War in Asia (2007): 47-77.

  • Hazan, Pierre, Translated by Sarah Meyer de Stadelhofen, Judging War, Judging History: Behind Truth and Reconciliation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

  • MacMillan, Margaret, The uses and abuses of History (New York: Profile Books, 2009).

  • Manna, Adel & Golani, Motti, Two Sides of the Coin: Independence and Nakba 1948. (The Hague: Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation series 4 Republic of Letters). Available free online on www.historyandreconciliation.org

  • Margalit, Avishai, The ethics of memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

  • Minow, Martha, Between vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (London: Beacon Press, 1998).

  • Nora, Pierre. “Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire.” Representations (1989): 7-24.

  • Portelli, Alessandro. The death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories: Form and meaning in oral history (New York: Suny Press, 2010).

  • Teitel, Ruti G., Transitional Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  • Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  • Velikonja, Mitja, Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Eastern European Studies (College Station, Texas: A&M University Press, 2003).

  • Winter, Jay, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European cultural history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  • Yazbak, Mahmoud, Weiss, Yfaat (eds.) Haifa Before and After 1948, Narratives of a Mixed City (The Hague: Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation, Series 6, Republic of Letters).

Registration

Enrolment through uSis is mandatory.
General information about uSis is available on the website.

Registration Studeren à la carte en Contractonderwijs

Not applicable.

Contact

Dr. Diana M.S.M. Natermann

Remarks