Memory, Culture, Forgetting
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this anthropology course on how individuals and societies build, sustain, recall, and erase memory. Topics include the history of knowledge, the role of authorities in shaping official versions of the past, how memory functions in the human brain, trauma and amnesia, false memory, sites of memory, and the commodification of memory in contemporary culture. The course examines scholarly debates over whose memories count as truthful and real, and how science itself produces and revises memory practices. Materials include the full syllabus, readings, and assignments, with an additional set of assignments for students taking the graduate version. As with other MIT OCW offerings, all course materials are free to access and a certificate is not offered.