American history has marked the land to the point that its landscapes are memory; they contain the traces of human intervention, social relationships, displacements and living habits. This course offers students a survey of American history in its broader conceptualization, taking into account cultural, artistic and memorial aspects related to its territory. It addresses the cultural construction of memory by interrogating various geographical sites and texts in which traces of the past are physically ingrained, commemorated, represented, celebrated or contested. The course is divided into 10 modules, each of which devoted to one specific landscape (ocean, river, plains, forests, plantations, city, roads, mines, sacrifice zones and parks & the non-human world). How are American landscapes more than what we see on the surface-level? Which pasts do these eroded places transmit, and how? Starting from Lauret Savoy’s Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (2016), we will highlight how natural landscapes become witnesses of political engagements, social decisions, forms of exclusion and conflicts. In retracing the history of the United States (and its connections with Belgium) via the shapeshifting elements of its landscapes, we will also interrogate the voices that have been silenced or omitted from dominant narratives. Each section will examine how artistic and creative sites of resistance (literary works, films, speeches, artivism, civil disobedience) respond to the damaging effects of human behavior (Anthropocene) and the global cultural crisis.
- Teacher: Bragard Véronique