Cultural Memory - BMEGT43YXXX

• Develop understanding of the relationship between cultural memory, individual memory, and history • Develop the ability to critically analyze how cultural memory is constructed, transmitted, and contested • Engage with cultural memory through direct experiences (field trips, sites) • Explore connections between local cultural memory practices and global contexts, including students' own cultural backgrounds • Explore ethical considerations in cultural heritage preservation and the implications of contested memories • Investigate the impact of digital connectivity on emerging cultural memory practices

1. Solid knowledge of the important elements and contexts of European, Western cultural development.
2. Solid knowledge of the cultural embeddedness of the communication institutional system.
3. Basic knowledge of social institutions (law, language, religion, etc.)

1. Skills of making independent analysis, knowledge claims, explanations and drawing valid conclusions.
2. Ability to make independent decisions in academic activities
3. Reliable use of professional language

1. Acceptance and representation of the diversity of one's own culture.
2. Avoidance of being biased, prejudical
3. Acceptance of other cultural traditions

1. Self-awareness of using the methodologies of one’s professional field, accepting the different ones of other fields
2. Independence
3. Proficiency in professional communication both in oral and written form

Lectures and class analyses

• Rigney, A. (2016). Cultural memory studies: Mediation, narrative, and the aesthetic. In: Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen (Eds). Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies. Routledge. 65-76.
• Assmann, J. (2008). Communicative and Cultural Memory. In Erll, A., & Nünning, A. (Eds.). Cultural memory studies: an international and interdisciplinary handbook. De Gruyter. 109-118.
• Assmann, A. (2008). Transformations between History and Memory. Social Research, 75(1), 49–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40972052
• Father, dir. István Szabó
• László Kürti (2016), Nomadism and Nostalgia in Hungary, M. Palmberger, J. Tošić (eds.), Memories on the Move: Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past. Palgrave. 217-246.
• Péter Balogh (2022) Clashing geopolitical self-images? The strange coexistence of Christian bulwark and Eurasianism (Turanism) in Hungary, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 63:6, 726-752, DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2020.1779772
• H. Glenn Penny (2014). Not Playing Indian: Surrogate Indigeneity and the German Hobbyist Scene. Performing Indigeneity. In Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny (Eds), Global Histories and Contemporary Experiences. University of Nebraska Press. 153-185.
• Excerpts from documentary films about relevant groups and festivals viewed in class.
• Menyhért, A. (2016). The image of the “maimed Hungary” in 20th-century cultural memory and the 21st-century consequences of an unresolved collective trauma: The impact of the Treaty of Trianon. Environmental and Social Place, 8(2), 11–XX. https://doi.org/10.5840/ESPLACE20168211
• Wojciech Browarny (2023). The Scars of Memory: The Biographies of Monument Trees in Central Europe, Porównania 2 (34).
• Turai, Hedvig (2009) 'Past Unmastered: Hot and Cold Memory in Hungary', Third Text, 23: 1, 97 — 106. DOI: 10.1080/09528820902786735
• Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, When Water Embraces Empty Space (video excerpt about the encounter at the museum).
• Aly, G., & Chase, J. S. (2023). The magnificent boat: The colonial theft of a South Seas cultural treasure. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Short excerpt.
• Preda, C. (2023). “Living Statues” and Nonuments as “Performative Monument Events” in Post-Socialist South-Eastern Europe. Nationalities Papers, 51(3), 544–562. doi:10.1017/nps.2021.84
• Andrew Hoskins (2018). Memory of the Multitude: The End of Collective Memory. In: Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition.
• Manifesto (2022) dir. Angie Vinchito [pseudonymous filmmaker (collective?)]. An award-winning found footage film composed entirely of Russian teens’ social media posts.
• Blaschitz, Edith, Uhl, Heidemarie, Vogt, Georg, Andraschek, Rosa, Krenn, Martin and Gasser, Wolfgang.
• Bisht, P. (2020). In Between Old and New, Local and Transnational: Social Movements, Hybrid Media and the Challenges of Making Memories Move. In: Merrill, S., Keightley, E., Daphi, P. (eds) Social Movements, Cultural Memory and Digital Media. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. (efforts to share and delocalize the Bhopal disaster)
• Walters, L. C., Michlowitz, R. A., Segarra Martinez, E., McMahan, R. P., & Kider, J. T., Jr. (2023). MemoryScan environments: Creating large-scale memory-evocative digital twins. Proceedings of the DTPI Conference. (immersive digital environments to evoke cultural memories)
• Thylstrup, N. B. (2019). Sovereign soul searching: The politics of Europeana. In The Politics of Mass Digitization. MIT Press.

Participation is mandatory. No more than 3 missed classes.

Assesment of activity, honework, exam and final project.

• Participation and activity: 10
• Homework: 25
• Exam: 30
• Final project: 35
• sum: 100

Participation

Retake and make-up test options are defined by the valid regulations of the University’s Code on Education and Examination.

Consulted with the Faculty Student Representative Committee, approved by the Vice Dean for Education, valid from: 02.06.2024.

The course examines cultural memory as one of the crucial ways in which cultures maintain continuity and manage change. Budapest is an amazing location to anchor our thinking about this topic – it is a place with deep layers of cultural memory going back to antiquity and beyond, a long-suffering crossroads of empires from East and West, its more recent history a revolving door of regime changes with innovative memory agendas, magically appearing and disappearing memory sites. The power of history and illusion in a gorgeous package of world heritage panoramas with a shady underside of memory wars. Who could ask for more?