De/colonising Memory: Public Histories of Empire, Colonialism & Postcolonialism - HIS00134M

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Module summary

Memories of empire and colonialism are deeply contested in public – in museums and archives, in public spaces and programmes of commemoration, in the rhetoric of politicians and journalists, and in and amongst global communities. In recent years we have seen discussion about the interpretation of heritage sites; about the land and knowledge rights of Indigenous people; about the repatriation of stolen artefacts and the return of displaced archives; about apology and reparations to people of colour for the injustices of slavery and oppression; as well as the much-discussed removal or protection of statues and monuments.

In this module students will explore the relationship between history, heritage and the imperial and colonial projects of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How have states, institutions and communities understood and constructed narratives about empire and coloniality? How are these narratives expressed through public manifestations in museums, archives, monuments, and popular culture, from the perspectives of both colonisers and the colonised? To what extent are neo-colonial agendas at work in public history practices? We will also consider how postcolonial, decolonial and Indigenous interventions have generated counternarratives, activist archives, and reclaimed memories and spaces.

Throughout we will ask: can public histories be decolonised? What does this mean and what does/could it look like? What are the roles and responsibilities of historians in this process, and how might we work alongside other communities? We will look at both debates and public histories internationally with case studies from Europe, South Asia, North America, South America, East Africa and Australasia.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2025-26

Module aims

The aims of this module are to:

• Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
• Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
• Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

• Demonstrate a knowledge of a specialist historiographical literature;
• Present findings in an analytical framework derived from a specialist field;
• Solve a well-defined historiographical problem using insights drawn from secondary and, where appropriate, primary sources.
• Set out written findings using a professional scholarly apparatus.

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing (RAW) weeks during which there are no seminars, and during which students research and write a formative essay, consulting with the module tutor. Students prepare for eight seminars in all.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

1. Memory and empire: Concepts and contexts
2. The Brutish Museums? Collecting and displaying coloniality
3. Displaced Archives: postcolonial memory and justice
4. Politics, policy and the rhetorics of colonialism and post-colonialism
5. Guilt, reparation and collective responsibility
6. Monumental slurs? Commemoration after empire
7. History as resistance – counternarratives and activist histories
8. Decolonising public history

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

Students submit a 2,000-word formative essay in week 9.
A 4,000-word summative essay will be due in the assessment period.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Module feedback

Students will typically receive written feedback on their formative essay within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative essay during their tutor’s student hours—especially during week 11, before, that is, they finalise their plans for the Summative Essay.

For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For reading during the module, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

• Harrison, Rodney and Lotte Hughes, "Heritage, colonialism and postcolonialism," Understanding the Politics of Heritage, ed. Rodney Harrison. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010, 234-269.)
• Nicolaïdis, Kalypso, Berny Sebe, and Gabrielle Maas, Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies. (London: I. B. Tauris & Company, Limited, 2014.)
• Hicks, Dan, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. (London: Pluto Press, 2020.)