Contesting the Past

This course provides a panoramic survey of the ways that competing interest groups call on knowledge or narratives of the past and methods of its study in debates over controversial public issues. It is designed to examine claims about the past through the lenses of alternative knowledge frameworks and ideas about reality, in the context of specific contemporary problems: e.g., nationalist narratives; the basis for human rights for indigenous peoples; ownership or destruction of the world's patrimony; strife over disputed lands; investigations into mass human exploitation, murder and genocide; communities’ engagement with their own history; the antiquity of humanity on the planet; and interstellar communications and paranormal phenomena. The information that we will draw from balances historical sources, contemporary literature (e.g., newspapers and other periodicals), archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, oral accounts, and videos (both academic and popular).