Historical Politics in Europe

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The basic goal of the course is to provide students with the knowledge about the politics of memory (historical politics), its manifestations in contemporary European states as well as its significance for the international relations. The term: politics of memory, which broadly can be defined as policy of dealing with regard to the past and shaping the historical consciousness of a broad social group, usually a nation, has been gaining in popularity in the last decade, especially among historians and in political discourse. Students attending the course should get acquainted with the essence of the politics of memory, ways of managing collective memory by ruling elites, disputes on the past in selected European states, as well as problems with historical background in the bilateral relations in Europe.

The course will be held twice a month.

The basic goal of the course is to provide students with the knowledge about the politics of memory (historical politics), its manifestations in contemporary European states as well as its significance for the international relations. The term: politics of memory, which broadly can be defined as policy of dealing with regard to the past and shaping the historical consciousness of a broad social group, usually a nation, has been gaining in popularity in the last decade, especially among historians and in political discourse. Students attending the course should get acquainted with the essence of the politics of memory, ways of managing collective memory by ruling elites, disputes on the past in selected European states, as well as problems with historical background in the bilateral relations in Europe. Attemps to conduct a politics of memory on the EU level will be discussed as well.

The course will be held twice a month. After four introductory classes, with the teacher playing an active role and stimulating discussion about the phenomenon of the politics of memory as well as methods of its investigation, taking as example Poland , students will be obliged to prepare their own analysis about politics of memory in selected European states and present them in form of oral presentations. The presentations will be discussed and commented with the active role of the academic teacher.

1. The Convolutions of Historical Politics, A. Miller, M. Lipman, Budapest, CEU Press, 2012

2. Law and Memory. Towards Legal Governance of History, Uladzislau Belavusau, Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias (eds.), Cambridge 2017

3. Nikolay Koposov, Memory Laws, Memory Wars. The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia, Cambridge 2017

4. Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak (eds) Memory and Change in Europe. Eastern Perspectives, Berghahn Publishers, 2016

5. The politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, Richard N. Lebow, W. Kansteiner, Claudio Fogu (eds), Durham and London, 2006

6. Power and the Past : Collective Memory and International Relations, E. Langenbacher, Y. Shain (ed.), Georgetown University Press, 2010

7. Engaging history. The problems and politics of memory in Russia and the Post-socialist space, Samuel A. Greene (ed.), Moscow 2010 (internet access http://carnegieendowment.org/files/WP_2_2010_engaging.pdf )

8. Marek Cichocki, New countries, old myths. A Central European appeal of the expansion of European understanding, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ece/research/intermarium/vol12/NewCountries.pdf

9. Geoff Eley, The past under Erasure? History, Memory, and the Contemporary, “Journal of Contemporary History”, 2011, nr 3, pp. 555-573

10. Past in the Making : Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989, M. Kopeček (ed.), Central European University Press 2007

11. Memory in a Global Age. Discourses, Practices and Trajectories

Editors: Assmann, A., Conrad, S. (Eds.), 2010

12. Łukasz Adamski, Ukrainian “Volhynian Negationism”: Reflections on the 2016 Polish–Ukrainian Memory Conflict, Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, vol. 3, nr 2, 2017 (to be published in March 2018. Text is available with the author).

After finishing this course students should:

1) have acquired (or broadened) knowledge about

a) the essence of historical consciousness,

b) politics of memory implemented in selected states with the particular emphasis on the Central and Eastern European countries

c) challenges for domestic politics and international relations stemming from different national politics of memory

2) be able to use proper investigation methods during research on the politics of the memory, in particular to apply source criticism

3) have improved their skills how to write a clear and precise analysis

1. (40%) the quality of the written analyse and the oral presentation

2. (20%) the active discussion during the seminar and its regular attendance

3. (40%) results of final exam verifying the basic knowledge, acquired during the course

Students are allow to absent themselves once (!) in semester with no further explanation required.

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