The essays in this Edition of Haunted Histories are a product of an undergraduate Writing Course at Boston University titled Haunted Histories: Trauma and Memory in American Culture, taught by Kaitlyn Martin Fox. The title of this Special December Issue is “” because this collection of essays contextualizes a range of ongoing social problems by examining how popular media, past and present, influences culture today. As we end the second decade of the 21st century, these essays reflect that although the ways people interact with society have changed many social problems have not. From sexism in popular memes to global lessons about freedom of speech on twitter, fake feminism on Instagram to warnings about racism on new platforms like Disney+, these essays discuss how historical cycles of violence take new forms and suggest adaptive ways of understanding and responding to them in the media age.
In this class, students considered scholarly approaches to trauma, memory, and historical haunting. They examined theoretical readings about the effects of traumatic events on both individual victims and collective society from which they learned that ongoing social violence in the present is often linked to unresolved or repressed events from the past. Haunted Histories, they determined, are those traumatic historical events that recur or have lingering effects in society today. When they applied these theories of haunting to popular media they found that although some cultural objects perpetuate cycles of historical violence while others can help us consider how to confront lingering ghosts of injustice so they do not determine our future.
So, why write about haunting in the media age? The authors of these essays argue that movies, television, popular stories, and social media should not be binged, clicked, swiped, and liked with indifference. Though it may be easier to ignore the ghosts of the past that linger on our computer screens and streaming services and in our beloved books and brands, these authors contend that such mediums can also be used to confront ongoing social problems. The following essays outline the importance of paying attention when the problems of our past resurface in the present and help readers reflect on how the tools available in our present world can be used to create a less haunted future.
Haunted Histories: Special Issue December 2019 