LTEN 178
Readings for Week One

We have three short readings for Week One.  The readings are available in multiple ways including pdfs that you can print out available on course website www.medievallit.org

Please be sure to bring print copies of each reading with you to class in order to help us be precise during discussion.

The following questions are designed to get you thinking about the readings prior to discussion.  We will build on them in class and use these terms throughout the quarter.

Hirsch: “The Generation of Postmemory” 

What is “postmemory” as Hirsch defines it?

What is the implied difference between memory and history as framed in this short piece?

Gordon: Excerpt from Ghostly Matters
What do you think it meant by “her shape and his hand?” (page 5-6).

What does Gordon mean by “haunting?”

Morrison: “Memory, Creation and Writing.”

How does Morrison discuss memory?

What is the relationship, for Morrison, between narrative and memory?

Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination,
            U Minnesota: 2008. (pages 3-7; 18-22).
Toni Morrison, “Memory, Creation, and Writing,” Thought: A Review of Culture and
 Ideas, 59: 385-390, December, 1984
Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory” in Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi,
            and Levy, eds. The Collective Memory Reader, Oxford UP, 2011, pp. 346-8.