Memory Cultures

This subject is not offered in 2015.

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Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in cultural studies, Master of Arts and Cultural Management (Moving Image)

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For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.

The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

The aim of this subject is to explore a theoretical history of remembrance in contemporary culture. We will begin by considering the massive transformations in cultural memory brought about by modernity. From this starting point we will consider the trajectories of cultural memory from Freud's curative hypotheses to the dominance of amnesia and trauma as tropes of memory in contemporary culture. Students will be expected to read and explore both theoretical accounts of contemporary cultural memory and to produce specific studies of the ways in which mechanical reproduction, testimony, the bureaucratic and state archive, film, monuments, museums, digital technologies and other cultural products and institutions have formed and continue to form contemporary cultures of remembrance.

Students who have completed this subject will:

• understand the major twentieth-century articulations of culture, memory and modernity;
• have developed the analytical skills and methodological confidence to produce detailed and innovative studies in cultural memory; and
• appreciate the inter-relations and dynamics of practices of remembrance as, in part, defining the cultural dynamics of the twentieth century.

A research essay of 5000 words 100% (due in the examination period). All students are required to make a formal class presentation (due during the first 10 weeks of semester) and a presentation of work towards their final essay (due during the last two weeks of semester). Students are required to attend a minimum of 80% (or 10 out of 12) classes in order to qualify to have their written work assessed. Any student who fails to meet this hurdle without valid reason will not be eligible to pass the subject. All required written work must be submitted in order to pass the subject. Essays submitted after the due date without an extension will be penalised 2% per day. Essays submitted after two weeks of the assessment due date without a formally approved application for special consideration or an extension will only be marked on a pass/fail basis if accepted.

A subject reader will be available.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

Students who successfully complete this subject will:

• have advanced research and analytic skills;
• develop critical and ethical self-awareness; and
• have the ability to develop and communicate effective arguments in both oral and written form.