The Politics of Regret - JPB126

• Title: The Politics of Regret
• Guaranteed by: Department of Political Science (23-KP)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2021
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited / unlimited (25)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: Hana Kubátová, M.A., Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): Hana Kubátová, M.A., Ph.D.
• Class: Courses for incoming students

Syllabus

Last update: Hana Kubátová, M.A., Ph.D. (10.04.2024)

The Politics of Regret

scheduled as part of the Politics, Philosophy and Economics program.

open to undergraduate students

lecture/seminar (1/1)

https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=13329

Course Outline

This course examines past injustices as central to contemporary world politics. We begin with questions of guilt, trauma, and responsibility before moving to forms of transitional justice, be it truth commissions, trials, or lustrations. Significant attention is also being paid to official and unofficial apologies, which have stirred much attention in the past few years. While part of this class is theoretical, we will examine (and debate) issues using examples from Europe and North America.

As part of this course, students learn:

• how the past is being constructed to serve present causes (and by whom),
• how past injustices are mobilised, demanded but also made salient,
• why the past matters and why it matters now.

 

Schedule & Required Reading:

Class 1 (Feb 22): Introductory Class

 

Class 2 (Feb 29): Trauma, Guilt, and Responsibility

 

Class 3 (Mar 7): Is the Past Another Country?

Tony Judt. “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe.” Daedalus 121, no. 4 (1992): 83–118.

 

Class 4 (Mar 14): Trials and Transitional Justice

Pinchevski, Amit – Liebes, Tamar. “Severed Voices: Radio and the Mediation of Trauma in the Eichmann Trial.” Public Culture 22, no. 2 (2010): 265–291.

 

Class 5 (Mar 21): Truth Commissions

Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, Andrew G. Reiter, Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm. “When Truth Commissions Improve Human Rights.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4, no. 3 (2010): 457–76.

 

Mar 28: Public Holiday

 

Class 6 (Apr 4): Lustration and Vetting

Monica Nalepa. Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010:1–30.

 

April 11: Reading Week/Pitch Your Project/No Class

 

Class 7 (Apr 25): Reparations and Compensations

Pablo de Greiff. “Introduction – Repairing the past: Compensation for victims of human rights violations.” The Handbook of Reparations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

 

Class 8 (May 2): Emotions and Actions

Elster, Jon. Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004: 216–44.

 

Class 9 (May 9): Public Apologies and National Membership

Nobles, Melissa. The Politics of Official Apologies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008: 1–41.

 

Class 10 (May 16): Minimizing Responsibility

Kampf, Zohar. “Public (non-) Apologies: The Discourse of Minimizing Responsibility.” Journal of Pragmatics 41, no. 11 (2009): 2257–70.

 

Class 11 (May 23): The Social Drama of Apology

Kampf, Zohar. “Journalists as Actors in Social Dramas of Apology.” Journalism 12, no. 1 (2011): 71–87.

 

Class 12 (May 30): Essay

 

Examination

Active Participation: 20%

In-Class Presentation: 30%

Essay: 50%