We remember war in many ways for many reasons. Memorials to heroes mark more than a simple record of sacrifice, for instance. They are part of a "construction of the past" vital to the definitions of a society and its culture. In the modern world, commemoration, political campaigns, arts and entertainment, literature, and written history all bear the mark of the pride, the passion, and the guilt that both the individual and the collective carry with our memories of the wars of the modern age.

This course will examine the complexities at work in this relationship. Using memoirs, monographs, literature, film, and a concentration on case studies, and building on smaller projects and intense and structured class discussion, students will prepare for their own individual development of a major senior project.  This endeavor will address the ways in which the memory and the use of the memory of war has shaped a particular history and society.  All efforts will be directed at not only closing the gap between the image and the reality but also understanding how and why that gap came to exist and why and how it may still persist.

The initial stages of the course will be conducted as a colloquium. A series of topics and readings will be addressed, written upon, and presented in class.  We will open with the most venerable of accounts, that of Homer's description of the battle for Troy in THE ILIAD.  Each student will complete a 1250 word essay on this matter together with a 200 word précis of your thinking that you will read to the seminar. Similar arrangements will proceed concerning important monographs addressing examples of the use of the memory of war in various societies, on the way in which film and literature have contributed to the phenomenon, and on the way in which actual participants experience the societal memories as individuals.  To facilitate the colloquial aspects of this class, your essays will be published at the deadline of the previous Friday on your homage on the World Wide Web.  Full information from which the above selections will be made by clicking here.  A timeline for the course is available here.

From the beginning of the term, students will develop their major projects. This main seminar project will involve the preparation of a lengthy study, around 8,000 words, assigned or selected on a particular case of remembrance and its consequences.  This study will require, on a disciplined time-table, important elements.  These include a statement of intent and feasibility, a bibliography, a draft, a presentation and defense of results before the class.  To this end, your work in progress also will be published on the World Wide Web.  Final essays considered fitting will be published in an history department "electronic book."

                                            Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania