Mental Health, Social Determinants of Health, Clinical Communication, Ethics and Law, Patient Safety, Professionalism (MBBS0047)

ORAL HISTORY|PUBLIC HISTORY|MODERN HISTORY|WORLD WAR TWO|HOLOCAUST

Advances in technology, increasing interest in ‘everyday history’ and history ‘from the bottom up’, and the voices of marginalised...

Narrating the Past: The Holocaust and World War II in Public and Oral History (HIST0779)

Advances in technology, increasing interest in ‘everyday history’ and history ‘from the bottom up’, and the voices of marginalised people who are often under-represented in official sources, have seen the rise of oral history from its beginnings in the 1960s and 1970s to its present-day omnipresence in archives, exhibitions, and documentaries. From the First and Second World War to the Holocaust, the US Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War, and from environmental activism to industrial heritage to sports: communities all over the world have had their histories recorded for posterity; collected by archives, assembled by filmmakers, curated for exhibitions, and studied by researchers.

In this module, students will critically analyse existing bodies of public and oral histories, or devise, conduct, and evaluate their own interviews, on select historical eras and subjects. It will introduce students to a wide range of audio/audio-visual recordings, including oral histories, other types of qualitative interviews, and documentaries. Doing so, the module will reflect on ethical issues arising from particular theoretical and methodological approaches, and the relationship between private and public, and history and memory. Students will engage with current debates surrounding the uses and limits of oral history; its use in museums and education; its future in a digital age; and questions of subjectivity, agency, memory, and identity.

Module Description:

This module introduces students to the European historical avant-gardes, focusing on Italian Futurism, Dada, and French Surrealism....