Course Content
Browse classes:
- Introduction to the course. Heritage and Nostalgia. Theoretical and Methodological Undertakings
- Studying Socialism from a Historical and Anthropological Perspective: Thirty Years after the Political Changes of 1989
- History and Memory of the Communist Period: Traumatic Pasts and Nostalgic Returns
- The Town and the Village – Internal Mobility and Residence Practices. Socialist Transformations and Their Lasting Effects
- Nostalgia of Socialist Everyday Life (1): Work Practices and Labor Organization under Socialism
- Nostalgia of Socialist Everyday Life (2): Free Time, Entertainment, Recreation and Vacations under Socialism
- Consumption under Socialism. Everyday Practices, Memory and Nostalgic Potential
- Living Spaces under Socialism – between Nostalgia and Rejection. The Transformations of Private and Public Spaces after 1989
- Public Rituals and Memorial Spaces of the Communist Period: Continuities, Disruptions, Heritage Construction
- Post-socialism and Post-colonialism: Post-Soviet Nostalgia, Yugonostalgia, Ostnostalgia
- Socialist Heritage and Museum Practices after 1989: between Nostalgia, Denunciation, and Disneyification
- Popular Culture under Socialism: Continuities and Nostalgic Revisiting
- Social Worlds and Transmission of Cultural Experience: Nostalgia and the Issue of Generations
- The Memory of Socialism – between Allergy and Nostalgia, Remembering and Amnesia
- Studying Socialism from the Perspective of Nostalgia and Heritage. Final Presentations and Conclusions
Complete Bibliography:
The Memory of Socialism – between Allergy and Nostalgia, Remembering and Amnesia
The class focuses more concretely on the problem of memory about the communist period, with particular emphasis on the efforts of maintaining remembrance and on the unavoidable (also organized) trends of its forgetting. Closer attention will be paid to the oral history collections after 1989 and to the interviews with elderly generations about their memory and interpretation of the communist past.
Texts for discussion:
- Bissell, W. C., Afterword: On Anthropology’s Nostalgia – Looking Back/Seeing Ahead. In: Angé, O. and D. Berliner, eds., Anthropology and Nostalgia. New York, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2015, 213-224.
- Nadkarni, M., “But it’s Ours”: Nostalgia and the Politics of Authenticity in Postsocialist Hungary. In: Maria Todorova, Zsuzsa Gille, eds., Post-Communist Nostalgia. Berghahn Books, 2010, 190-214.
Additional readings:
- Bernhard, M. and J. Kubik, Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration. Oxford University Press, USA, 2014. (selected chapters)
- Kattago, S., Memory and Representation in Contemporary Europe, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012.