The Whitney Seminars

Coordinator
Jay Winter (History) (300E HGS, 432.1395)

Beginning in 2002–2003 the Whitney Humanities Center is sponsoring a yearlong graduate course entitled "The Whitney Seminar." Designed to speak across disciplinary lines and to broad public and intellectual issues, the format of the seminar includes both the weekly seminar as well as a series of coordinated public lectures. The lecture series is open to the Yale and local community.

A number of lectures on history, memory, and European identities complement the seminar. These lectures, open to the Yale community, follow the seminar.

Seminars
WHIT 970a, When Was Europe? The Whitney Seminar on European Identities. Jay Winter, James Whitman. Sem. Th 4–6, Lect. Th 7
The seminar examines the proposition that Europe has never been a reality but for centuries has been an idea, expressed in a host of ways, about Enlightenment and Progress. This rhetoric informed social movements, such as Marxism, liberalism, and various forms of nationalism, as well as artistic and intellectual currents. Much of this discussion also cloaked inhumanity and barbarism, especially (but not only) in its imperial forms. This seminar examines the notion that "Europe" was as much a shifting discursive field as it was a shifting territorial one. The boundaries of both discourse and territory have never been fixed. They remain fluid to this day. The seminar is complemented by a lecture series, "When Was Europe?," organized through the Whitney Humanities Center and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. The lectures follow the Thursday seminar. Also HIST 970a.

WHIT 971b, History and Memory. The Whitney Seminar on European Identities. Jay Winter, Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann. Sem. Th 4–6, Lect. Th 7
This seminar explores facets of the historical literature surrounding issues of individual memory, collective memory, and commemoration. The focus is on modern Europe, though the literature surveyed addresses issues beyond the confines of Europe. After a survey of interdisciplinary approaches to the field, focusing on social agency, representation, trauma studies, and cognitive psychological research, two different kinds of evidence are examined. The first relates to historical sites (monuments, ruins, battlefields, landscapes) as well as social spaces (families, trials, museums); the second to representations and languages of remembrance, through the narratives of trauma, fiction, memoir, testimonial literature, photography, and film. The focus is on civil society rather than primarily on the state and the manipulation of commemorative forms. Also HIST 971b.

Next: Women's and Gender Studies