Humanities 80: EXPLORING MEMORY

Seminar for Campus-wide Honors Program

FALL 2017

TUESDAY, 3:30pm - 6pm

Krieger Hall 126

Professor Sarah Farmer

233 Krieger Hall
Office hours: Tuesday, 2:00-3:15 or by appointment

Why does it matter that we have a past? How do we remember? How

does the way we remember the past shape us as individuals and as members of
groups? Such fundamental questions about human memory are central to
scholarly inquiry across a wide array of disciplines. In this seminar, we will
explore questions historians, sociologists, psychologists and neuroscientists ask
in their efforts to understand the role of memory in defining our experience as
humans.
We will meet once a week for discussion of common readings. Twice we
will have guest appearances by distinguished members of the UCI faculty from
the School of Medicine and the School of Biological Sciences. Students will be
graded as follows:

Attendance: 15%
Active Participation: 20%
Weekly writing assignments and occasional in-class writing): 50%
class presentation: 10%
complete eee class evaluation: 5%

Guidelines:
Attendance: Because this class is a seminar, and so much of what we do
is group discussion, your attendance matters to the overall success of the class.
We have two excellent invited speakers and it is imperative that you attend their
talks. Absences will be excused solely for illness documented by a note from the
office of a medical practice. If you cannot come to class please let me know in
advance by sending me an email.

Active Participation: Doing the weekly reading is essential to our having a

successful seminar. There are many ways to effectively participate in our weekly
discussion. Listening to others, asking a question of a classmate, offering a point
of view or analysis, bringing the group's attention to a passage or section of the
reading that you find interesting or confusing are all ways to contribute to our
discussion.
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Weekly writing assignments: All responses are to be typed in 12-point font,

double-spaced, printed out and handed in to me at our meeting. (Do not send
me your assignments by email, text or carrier pigeon!). Your writing will be
judged for both clarity of expression and the thought you put in.

Readings: Most of the reading is posted in pdf format on the eee class website.
These readings are indicated with an asterisk (*)

Group Reports: As a member of a small group (details to be worked out at our

first meeting) each student will be responsible once during the quarter to read an
extra assignment (which I have chosen) and participate in reporting on it to the
class. The group report should last about 30 minutes. The material assigned for
reports is indicated on the syllabus. Reports start in week 4.
The report needs to do the following:
1) Identify the argument.
2) Summarize the essential content.
3) Relate this reading to the other readings of the week to which it pertains.
Everyone in the group must contribute to the report and speak briefly. It is
up to each group to decide how to split up the work. You will also have some in-
class time to huddle with your group before reporting.
Writing component: Write up one page on the portion of the report for which you
were responsible. If you are doing the report by yourself, write up two
components of your report.
Other members of the class will then ask questions of the reporting group.
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Week 1
October 3: introduction to the class. Sign up for
presentations.

I. Is Memory an Individual or a Social Phenomenon?

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

Week 2
October 10:
Autobiography and Memoir

Readings:
*Annie Dillard, "To Fashion A Text", Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of
Memoir, pp. 53-76.

*Daniel Schacter, "Of Time and Autobiography," chp. 8 in Searching for Memory:
The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 72-97.

*Jeremy Popkin, "History and Autobiography." chp. 1 in Historians, History &

Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 11-32.

Writing assignment:
1) In one page (double-spaced), summarize the key points of either the chapter
by Schachter or the chapter by Popkin. 2) For each reading (Dillard, Schacter
and Popkin) identify the sources on which author builds his or her interpretation
or understanding of the past.

Week 3
October 17: The Neurobiology of Autobiographical Memory: The Case Study of
H.M.

GUEST SPEAKER, Dr. Mark Mapstone, Professor, Department of

Neurology, UC Irvine

THE READINGS FOR THIS WEEK ARE SHORT. START READING FOR
WEEK 4 SINCE THAT ASSIGNMENT IS LONGER.

Reading:
*William Beecher Scoville and Brenda Miller, "Loss of Recent Memory After
Bilateral Hippocampal Lesions," Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and
Psychiatry, 1957. Original journal article describing the case.
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*Susanne Corkin, "What's new with the amnesic patient H.M.?, Nature Reviews:
Neuroscience, 3 February 2002 (pdfs class website)

Obituary of H.M.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05hm.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semity
n.www&_r=3&

Radio piece (12 minutes, includes audio recording of H.M.)

Brian Newhouse, "H.M.'s Brain and the History of Memory," Weekend Edition
Saturday, NPR, February 24, 2007.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7584970

WRITING ASSIGNMENT:
1. From the scientific articles, choose a passage that you find interesting or
would like to understand better. (Scoville, Miller or Corkin).
2. Copy out the passage.
3. State what about this passage you find interesting or unclear (or both, as the
case may be). (In other words, why did you choose it?)
3. Formulate two questions that you would like to askDr. Mapstone.

Week 4 (first reports)

October 24: Social Memory and Family History

Reading:
Richard White, Remembering Ahanagran, introduction and Part I, pp. 3-131.

*Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, excerpted in

Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, Levy, The Collective Memory Reader (Oxford, 2011):
139-149.

Writing assignment (one page, double-spaced): in the introduction to

Remembering Ahanagran, Richard White writes: "Sometimes in this book I can
only follow memory; more rarely there is only history; but the heart of the book
are those places where history and memory meet. There I can juxtapose the two,
compare them, and sometimes suture them together into a fuller, if never certain,
account of the past". (p. 6)
In one page, identify such a place in Part I of Remembering Ahanagran and
indicate which elements White considers as memory and which as history. What
are the sources for memory? What are the sources for history?

Report:
*Lewis A. Coser, editor and translator, "The Collective Memory and the Family,"
chp. 5 in Maurice Halbwachs: On Collective Memory (Chicago, 1992): 54-83.
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Reporters:

II. TRAUMATIC MEMORY

Week 5
October 31: Repressed Memory and the Psychoanalytic Model of the Mind

*Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, Studies in Hysteria, pp. vii-xxxiii (introduction
by Rachel Bowlby) and pp. 1-50 (Preliminary Statement, Breuer and Freud, and
case history of Frulein Anna O. (Breuer)

Writing assignment (one page):

1. Choose passage or a scene from the case study that you would like the class
to discuss.
2. Copy out the passage.
3. Why did you choose it?
3. Formulate (in writing) two questions about the passage, or the reading in
general, that you would like to have the class discuss.

Report:
*Frank Sulloway, Freud Biologist of the Mind, preface and chapter 2.

*Louis Menand, Why Freud Survives, The New Yorker, August 28, 2017

Reporters:

Week 6
November 7: Holocaust Memory

Reading:
Annette Wiewiorka, The Era of the Witness (Cornell U P, 2006)

Television: "This is Your Life Hanna Bloch Kohner", May 27, 1953
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3F9Rc6i_-w

Writing assignment (1-2 pages):

1. Summarize the three successive phases Weiwiorka identifies in the
emergence of Holocaust testimony.
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2. Where would you situate "This is Your Life Hanna Bloch Kohner" in the
evolution of Holocaust awareness and Holocaust testimony as analyzed by
Weiwiorka?

Report:
Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman, Mengele's Skull: The Advent of a Forensic
Aesthetics (2012). This is an essay of about 50 pages (small format). Available
used on Amazon for about $12.00.

Reporters:

Week 7
November 14: The Arts of Memory

A.R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book About a Vast Memory
(Harvard U Press, 1987).

Report: (three possibilities)

*Mary Carruthers and Jan. M. Ziolkowski, eds. "General Introduction" and chp. 1
(Hugh of St. Victor, "The Three Nest Memory Aids for Learning History") in The
Medieval Craft of memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (U Pennsylvania,
2002), 1-40.

Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (Viking, 1984)

Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering
Everything (Penguin, 2011)

Reporters:
Writing assignment: in class writing

Week 8:
November 21: NO CLASS (THANKSGIVING THURSDAY)

Week 9
November 28: False Memory

*Carol Burke, "Stolen Valor"

*Philip Gourevitch, "The Memory Thief", The New Yorker, June 14, 1999
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Written Assignment: How would you compare the falsehoods of the soldiers
Carol Burke writes about and the fabrications of the "memory thief" Gourevitch
reports on?

Report: work of Elizabeth Loftus, UCI Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology,

and Professor of Law, and Cognitive Science

1) watch Loftus's TED talk

2) Loftus's work has been the object of debate. This article challenges Loftus's
research and conclusions.

*Linda Meyer Williams, "Recall of Childhood Trauma: A Prospective Study of

Women's Memories of Child Sexual Abuse", Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology 1994, Vol. 62, No 6, 1167-1176.

Reporters:

Week 10
December 5: Science Meets the Humanities?

Professor Larry Cahill, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior

"The Need for Narrative"

Writing assignment: fill out eee class evaluation (5% of grade)