Informace o kurzu

Course Description

This course examines how struggles over the interpretation of the past—memory wars—shape contemporary international politics. It introduces students to key constructivist approaches to the politics of memory in International Relations, including collective memory, historical analogies, memory politics, and ontological security, and explores how memories of violence, loss, and injustice are mobilized to construct political authority, national identity, and foreign-policy roles. The course moves from foundational theoretical debates on memory, power, and identity to the analysis of how memory becomes institutionalized through state practices, laws, diplomacy, and security discourses. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which memory operates as a resource for nationalism, populism, and moral boundary-drawing, and how competing mnemonic claims generate domestic polarization and international conflict. These debates are grounded in a series of in-depth case studies, including memory wars in Europe, the global circulation and contestation of Holocaust memory, Israel’s evolving memory politics from the Holocaust to October 7 as a moment of re-traumatization and crisis of recognition, Russia’s instrumentalization of World War II and imperial narratives, and U.S. debates on exceptionality and global responsibility. The course also addresses diasporas as transnational carriers of memory, mnemonic diplomacy, and the material politics of memory reflected in monuments, commemorations, and international institutions. By combining theoretical texts with contemporary empirical cases, the course equips students with analytical tools to critically assess how memory politics shape foreign policy behavior, security practices, nationalism, and the international order in the 21st century.