Convener: Associate Professor A Mendelsohn
Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master's programme.
History is thickly imbricated in our everyday lives. This course examines the multiple ways in which history is produced and circulates in public life. It does so by exploring how history manifests in different media, how histories of various kinds cross between distinct fields of public practice, and how they gain and lose appeal as their form and potency changes. The course will involve critical engagement with the idea of the production of history, as well as with theories of memory, publics, publicness, publicity, counter publics, the social imaginary of the public sphere and the role it is understood to play in a democracy, and the historicization of these concept qua concepts. Students will develop a theoretical understanding of how historical materials are made, assimilate into and mutate within the public imagination, and circulate in public life.