“The Technology of Memories: Collective Traumatic Remembrance in Modern Germany ”

The DAAD Summer Seminar on The Technologies of Memories would have three distinct points of orientation. The first would be a focus on the collective memory of specific catastrophic events occurring within the period of modernization in Germany from the end of the 19th Century through World War II. Possible examples here would include memories of World War I; the Holocaust; the air war over Germany in WW II; memories of specific one-time events. Secondly, we would be concerned with how such memories are constructed, preserved, manipulated, circulated (Kittler) and even fabricated via specific media technologies. These would include film, photography, radio, television and print media (newspapers, comics, and literature). What emerges then as a final issue are questions about what sorts of political, cultural, bureaucratic, linguistic or even “imagined communities” are created or enabled via the circulation of various memories and memory technologies.

The seminar will take place from June 16 to July 27 2008.

Seminar Director: David Bathrick, Professor of German and Theatre & Film, Cornell University