Browse Hierarchy SML4205: History as/and Fiction

How do we relate to history? And where do we take our historical knowledge and judgements from? Arguably, they do not only come from history lessons and books but also from the fictional accounts we watch and read. This module is concerned with the creative and complex relationship between history and fiction, and the ways in which fictional works (be these printed texts, radio or theatre plays, or films) inscribe historical events and developments into our cultural memory. It will work with contextualised examples of how history is narrated across languages & cultures and will cover different media. Drawing from the interdisciplinary field of memory studies, we will investigate how historical events are both discussed and (re)configured by fiction, and which principles of reconfiguration are at play.