Experimental
Histories have sought to transform how and what we understand as history. Not
in an effort to undermine the power of the past but to question whether it is
past and how we might know it anew. Traditional histories have often excluded
particular populations of people but also particular modes of representation.
This seminar will consider alternative modes of presenting the past (art, film,
re-enactments, poetry,) that have arisen through new critical thinking such as
post-colonialism, queer theory, new materialism, fictocriticism and genealogy
among others. A range of these experimental histories will be studied and
students will be asked to respond in critical and creative ways to the
examples. Students will also be asked to create alternative or expanded
archives from which they will produce their own short form experimental
histories.
