SPAN 597 Contemporary Spanish Memory Studies

This course will examine various intellectual, social, and artistic formulations and uses of historical memory in contemporary Spanish culture, placing special emphasis on what has been called the memory "boom" (or, in more cynical corners, "industry") of the past quarter century. We will consider a rich set of materials—including documentary, fictional film, novels, drama, and graphic narrative—which have played no small role in catalyzing and informing Spanish society’s belated, if now vigorous, public reckoning vis-à-vis the traumas of the Civil War (1936-1939), the ensuing Franco dictatorship (1939-75), and the so-called "Pacto del Olvido" (the Pact of Forgetting) which characterized Spain’s arguably prolonged transition to democracy in the late 1970s, the 1980s, and even into the 1990s.