HNR 135 POLITICS OF ERASING HISTORY

Political actors through the ages have attempted to erase people, groups, and events for political purposes. Whether we look back to damnatio memoriae in Rome when the senate erased the name of a targeted person from records and ordered their face chiseled from sculpture, or we study Soviet erasure of specific people from photographs, or we look to how politicians attempt to erase events from textbooks or records, our work in this course will help us identify how, when, and why political actors use erasure. In addition, we will focus attention on what role technology plays in these processes, taking us from the chiseling of stone to the 1’s and 0’s of the internet. Finally, embedded in the course will be the voices of those who attempt to resist erasure. This class will ask you to think about how power, communication, and memory are intertwined, and what that means for your understanding of politics and history. SOCIETY