JRN 5770: Special Topics: Media and Social Memory

Dr. Carolyn Kitch Fall 2011, Tuesdays, 5:30 to 8 Annenberg Hall Room 5 Office hours: Tues 3-5, Wed 10-12 Office: 345 Annenberg Hall 215-204-5077 / ckitch@temple.edu Required texts All readings will be made available on Blackboard or distributed in class. Course description Media and Social Memory is a graduate seminar on the role of mass media and other forms of public communication in the creation and revision of social (or collective) memory and the role of social memory in the creation and revision of mass media and public communication. While media will be broadly defined in that we will have many examples for each weekly theme, most of the media texts we analyze in class will be non-fiction and will be either journalistic and/or documentary in nature. The weekly themes will include a range of pivotal events, periods, or phenomena of the past, as well as (and especially) the implications of that past for the present. Most of the materials we will read, view, and listen to will have double significance: they are about memory, while, at the same time, they themselves are forms of commemoration. Therefore, we will be analyzing their form and function as well as their content. We will analyze these media with the help of theoretical readings drawn from sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, political science, and literary studies in addition to communication studies. Assignments and assessment Your performance in this class will be assessed according to your engagement with the material, your demonstrated command of the theories we discuss, and the quality of your own research. Most important is your participation in discussion of our readings and your contributions to in-class analysis of the media we survey each week. You are expected to turn in written notes on each weeks readings. These should be 4 to 5 pages long, double spaced, and should both sum up and offer thoughts and questions about the assigned readings. These weekly notes will not be individually graded, but instead will be considered, along with your oral contributions to our weekly classes, as part of your seminar participation. Seminar participation is so important in this class that it counts for 70 percent of your final grade. The remaining 30 percent of your grade will be determined by your performance on a final research paper (at least 20 pages, double-spaced, plus references) in which you apply the theoretical and critical insights you have gained to a media product or public-communication phenomenon of your choice.

2 This assignment has three parts: (1) a proposal with a preliminary bibliography; (2) an in-class presentation; and (3) the paper itself. The written paper should be of academic-conference caliber. Conditions of the course Grading scale and standards In this graduate class, an A represents outstanding or exceptional work that fulfills the assignment with excellence in content and execution. A B indicates competent work that nevertheless is not a full or well-executed completion of the assignment. A C means that the work is within the parameters of the assignment but is significantly lacking in content and execution. A plus or a minus distinction may be used. I do not use the D grade in graduate classes. A failing grade of F means that assignments were not turned in or were very poorly executed, that the student did not participate in the class in any significant way, or that the student was academically dishonest. All students are expected to demonstrate a good command of English grammar and spelling, and writing quality will be a factor in grades. The quality and quantity of your participation in this semester also is a significant factor in your grade, as is your attendance (please see below). Academic honesty and dishonesty: Plagiarism and other forms of cheating The following statement is from the online Temple University Graduate School Bulletin: Academic honesty and integrity constitute the root of the educational process at Temple University. Intellectual growth relies on the development of independent thought and respect for the thoughts of others. To foster this independence and respect, plagiarism and academic cheating are prohibited. Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of another individuals ideas, words, labor, or assistance. All coursework submitted by a student, including papers, examinations, laboratory reports, and oral presentations, is expected to be the individual effort of the student presenting the work. When it is not, that assistance must be reported to the instructor. If the work involves the consultation of other resources such as journals, books, or other media, those resources must be cited in the appropriate style. All other borrowed material, such as suggestions for organization, ideas, or actual language, must also be cited. Failure to cite any borrowed material, including information from the internet, constitutes plagiarism. [Here I will add that this policy applies to the assigned readings as well as works from outside class; just because we have read a work in class doesnt mean that you can use the authors wording as if it were your own. This policy applies to your weekly notes as well as your final paper.] Academic cheating results when the general rules of academic work or the specific rules of individual courses are broken. It includes falsifying data; submitting, without the instructors approval, work in one course that was done for another; helping others to plagiarize or cheat from ones own or anothers work; or undertaking the work of another person. The penalty for academic dishonesty can vary from a reprimand and receiving a failing grade for a particular assignment, to a failing grade in the course, to suspension or expulsion from the University. The penalty varies with the nature of the offense. Students who believe that they have been unfairly accused may appeal through their school/colleges academic grievance procedure and, ultimately, to the Graduate Board if academic dismissal has occurred.

3 In this class, the penalty for academic dishonesty is failure of the classnot just the assignment, but the entire course. Attendance and missed work This course meets only once a week, and a significant amount of material will be covered every week. If you have a good reason for missing class, I would like to know about it in advance of the class if possible. I realize that sometimes absences are unpredictable and unavoidable. Thats why you may be absent from one class without explanation or penalty. For each additional unexcused absence, your seminar-participation grade will drop by half a letter grade (A goes down to A-minus, etc.). You are expected to turn in notes on each weeks assigned readings, even if you miss class. Special needs Any student who has a need for accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss the specific situation as soon as possible. You also may contact Disability Resources and Services at 215-204-1280 in 100 Ritter Annex, a university department that will coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. Access to the instructor My office hours are listed at the top of this syllabus. I also am sometimes available to see students by appointment at other times. You may contact me by phone or e-mail, listed above. If you email me, I should respond in some form by the following business day, assuming that I am not on academicbusiness travel and that the semester is still in progress. Course conduct and sensitivity I expect you to approach this class in a professional manner. I expect you to be on time, to come prepared and to participate fully. Please turn off your cell phones prior to class. Media issues and content cannot be thoughtfully and rigorously discussed without an occasional reference to unpopular ideas or to offensive material. Students and instructors alike are expected to remain sensitive to individual differences. We will make every effort to discuss differences with no anger, arrogance, or personal attacks, and without perpetuating stereotypes about gender, age, race, religious affiliation, sexual preference, national origin, dialect, or disability. Academic rights and responsibility Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom. The University has adopted a policy on Student and Faculty Academic Rights and Responsibilities (Policy # 03.70.02) which can be accessed through the following link: http://policies.temple.edu/getdoc.asp? policy_no=03.70.02.

JRN 5770, Special Topics: Media and Social Memory Fall 2011, Dr. Carolyn Kitch WEEKLY SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READINGS (subject to minor change) Aug 30 Course overview The Landscape of Social Memory Sept 6 Foundations Readings: Halbwachs, Huyssen (Present Pasts), Zelizer (Reading), Zerubavel, Edy Viewing/discussion: (part of) Ken Burnss Jazz; The Journey: Superbowl 2010 Memory vs. history Readings: Schwartz, Archibald, Glassberg, Kammen, Bodnar Viewing/discussion: media coverage of the 10th anniversary of September 11 National memory narratives Readings: Time Life on the Mississippi (to be distributed in class); Sturken (Camera Images), Kitch (20th-Century), Meyers (Still Photographs), West, Simon Viewing/discussion: Time special issue; Americas Journey and The Time Has Come (USA Today and Chicago Sun-Times videos about the Obama inauguration) Crisis and commemoration Sept 27 War, Part I: Commemorating heroes Readings: Brokaw, Barthel (War), Biesecker, Sturken (The Wall) Viewing/discussion: The Greatest Generation; Ernie Pyle: The Voice of G.I. Joe War, Part II: Contested memories Readings: Savage, Zolberg, Choi, Robinson, Hogea Viewing/discussion: Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (HBO documentary) The Holocaust Readings: Zelizer (2 chapters from Remembering to Forget), Loshitzky, Huyssen (Of Mice), Hoskins (Signs) Viewing/discussion: Survivors of the Holocaust (Spielberg documentary); photojournalism after camp liberations Terror and disaster Readings: Serazio, Berkowitz, Cohen & Willis, Doss, Foote Viewing/discussion: News coverage of Hurricane Katrina aftermath and anniversaries; Objects and Memory (PBS documentary about Oklahoma City bombing & 9/11)

Sept 13

Sept 20

Oct 4

Oct 11

Oct 18

Popular culture, heritage, and nostalgia Oct 25 Vernacular narratives and countermemory Readings: Delany Sisters, Having Our Say (to be distributed in class) Viewing/discussion: Having Our Say (New York Times series, book, and film) Preliminary final-paper proposal due; shorter notes (2-3 pp.) due this week Memorializing dead celebrities Readings: People and Rolling Stone tribute issues on Michael Jackson (to be distributed in class); Mazzarella & Matyjewicz, Kitch (A News) Viewing/discussion: Commemorative journalism about Michael Jackson Final-paper proposal and working bibliography due; no notes due this week Nov 8 Heritage culture (in travel journalism, tourism, and museums) Readings: Lowenthal, Thomas, Silverstone, Barthel (Consuming), Wallace Viewing/discussion: PA Civil War 150 web site; Stories of the Land Popular culture and nostalgia Readings: Davis, Grainge, Popp, Meyers (The Engine) Viewing/discussion: Coke ads; coverage of the Royal Wedding No notes due this week NO CLASS CALENDAR ADJUSTMENT FOR THANKSGIVING Guest speakers: doing dissertation research on media and memory Your turn! Research presentations Final research papers due

Nov 1

Nov 15

Nov 22 Nov 29 Dec 6

6 JRN 5770, Special Topics: Media and Social Memory Fall 2011, Dr. Carolyn Kitch REQUIRED READINGS (subject to minor change)

For Week 2 (Sept 6) Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. & trans Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 37-53. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia, in Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 11-29. Barbie Zelizer, Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no. 2 (June 1995): 214-239. Eviatar Zerubavel, Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past, Qualitative Sociology 19, no. 3 (1996): 283-299. Jill A. Edy, Journalistic Uses of Collective Memory, Journal of Communication 49, no. 2 (spring 1999): 71-85. For Week 3 (Sept 13) Barry Schwartz, Frame Images: Towards a Semiotics of Collective Memory, Semiotica 121, no. 1/2 (1988): 1-40. Robert R. Archibald, A Personal History of Memory, in Social Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Jacob J. Climo and Maria G. Cattell (Walnut Creek CA: Alta Mira Press, 2002), 65-80. David Glassberg, Sense of History, in Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 3-22. Michael Kammen, Disremembering the Past While Historicizing the Present, in Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 655-688. John Bodnar, Celebrating the Nation, 1961-1976, in Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 206-244.

7 For Week 4 (Sept 20) Time special issue: Life on the Mississippi (to be distributed in class) Marita Sturken, Camera Images and National Meaning (Ch. 1), in Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, The AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 19-45. Carolyn Kitch, Twentieth-Century Tales: Newsmagazines and American Memory, Journalism & Communication Monographs 1, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 119-155. Oren Meyers, Still Photographs, Dynamic Memories: A Study of the Visual Presentation of Israels Past in Commemorative Newspaper Supplements, The Communication Review 5 (2002): 179-205. Emily West, Selling Canada to Canadians: Collective Memory, National Identity, and Popular Culture, Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 2 (June 2002): 212-239. Vera C. Simon, Nations on Screen: Live Broadcasting of Bastille Day and Reunification Day, European Review of History 15, no. 6 (December 2008): 615-628. For Week 5 (Sept 27) Additional assignment: Rent and watch (on your own) Saving Private Ryan Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 1998), xvii-xxx, 3-83. Diane Barthel, War and Remembrance, in Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 79-100. Barbara A. Biesecker, Remembering World War II: The Rhetoric and Politics of National Commemoration at the Turn of the 21st Century, Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 4 (November 2002), 393-409. Marita Sturken, The Wall, the Screen, and the Image: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Representations 35 (Summer 1991): 118-142. For Week 6 (Oct 4) Kirk Savage, The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument, in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 127-149. Vera L. Zolberg, Contested Remembrance: The Hiroshima Exhibit Controversy, Theory and Society 27, no. 4 (August 1998): 565-590.

8 Suhi Choi, Silencing Survivors Narratives: Why Are We Again Forgetting the No Gun Ri Story? Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11, no. 3 (2008): 367-388. Sue Robinson, Vietnam and Iraq: Memory versus History during the 2004 Presidential Campaign Coverage, Journalism Studies 7, no. 5 (2006): 729-744. Alina Hogea, Coming to Terms with the Communist Past in Romania: An Analysis of the Political and Media Discourse Concerning the Tismaneanu Report, Studies of Transition States and Societies 2, no. 1 (2010): 16-30. For Week 7 (Oct 11) Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Remember and Remembering to Forget (Chs. 6 & 7), in Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Cameras Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 171-239. Yosefa Loshitzky, Inverting Images of the 40s: The Berlin Wall and Collective Amnesia, Journal of Communication 45, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 93-107. Andreas Huyssen, Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno in Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 122-137. Andrew Hoskins, Signs of the Holocaust: Exhibiting Memory in a Mediated Age, Media, Culture & Society 25, 1 (January 2003): 7-22. For Week 8 (Oct 18) Michael Serazio, When the Sportswriters Go Marching In: Sports Journalism, Collective Trauma, and Memory Metaphors, Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, no. 2 (June 2010): 155-173. Dan Berkowitz, The Ironic Hero of Virginia Tech: Healing Trauma through Mythic Narrative and Collective Memory, Journalism 11, no. 6 (2010): 643-659. Elisia L. Cohen and Cynthia Willis, One Nation under Radio: Digital and Public Memory after September 11, New Media and Society 6, no. 5 (2004): 591-610. Erika Doss, Death, Art and Memory in the Public Sphere: The Visual and Material Culture of Grief in Contemporary America, Mortality 7, no. 1 (2002): 63-82. Kenneth E. Foote, A Landscape of Violence and Tragedy (Ch. 1), in Shadowed Ground: Americas Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 1-35. For Week 9 (Oct 25) Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters First 100 Years (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1993). (To be distributed in class.)

For Week 10 (Nov 1) Commemorative issues of People and Rolling Stone, on Michael Jackson (to be distributed in class) Sharon R. Mazzarella and Timothy M. Matyjewicz, The Day the Music DiedAgain: Newspaper Coverage of the Deaths of Popular Musicians, in Pop Music and the Press, ed. Steve Jones (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 219-234. Carolyn Kitch, A News of Feeling as Well as Fact: Public Mourning for the Dead Celebrity, in Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 61-86. For Week 11 (Nov 8) David Lowenthal, Heritage Ascendent, in The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1-30. Selma Thomas, Private Memory in a Public Space: Oral History and Museums, in Oral History and Public Memories, ed. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 87-100. Roger Silverstone, Museums and the Media: A Theoretical and Methodological Exploration, The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship 7, no. 3 (1988): 231-241. Diane Barthel, Consuming History, in Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 117-138. Mike Wallace, The Virtual Past: Media and History Museums, in Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 101-114. For Week 12 (Nov 15) Fred Davis, Contemporary Nostalgia, in Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: The Free Press, 1979), 118-142. Paul Grainge, Nostalgia and Style in Retro America: Moods, Modes, and Media Recycling, Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 23, no 1 (spring 2000): 27-34. Richard K. Popp, History in Discursive Limbo: Ritual and Conspiracy Narratives on the History Channel, Popular Communication 4, no. 4 (2006): 253-272. Oren Meyers, The Engines in the Front, but its Hearts in the Same Place: Advertising, Nostalgia, and the Construction of Commodities as Realms of Memory, Journal of Popular Culture 42, no. 4 (2009): 733-755.