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Summer of 2026 

What should we remember about our nations’ past, and what stories do nations want us to remember — or forget?

Unsettling Memories invites students to explore these questions about how communities in the United States and Germany confront the legacies of racial violence and genocide. The four-week course begins in Sewanee and the U.S. South, where you will examine sites tied to slavery and segregation, and continues in Berlin—the capital of Germany and a global center for memorial culture—where you will study how Germany remembers the Holocaust through its monuments, museums, and public spaces.

Through close observation, discussion, and travel, you’ll investigate how history is told, who gets to tell it, and how memory fuels public debate today.

Quick Facts

Where: Multi-location USA & Germany
Sewanee & the U.S. South – Explore Sewanee’s own memory landscape, Nashville’s Fort Negley, and the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.
Berlin, Germany – Walk through a city transformed by remembrance. Visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Topography of Terror, and local Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) that mark Holocaust victims’ last chosen homes

When: May 11 - June 6, 2026

What: During this four (4) week course students will learn on the ground in Tennessee, Alabama, and Berlin, Germany as they examine how communities confront the legacies of slavery and the Holocaust. Through site visits to memorials, museums, and contested landscapes, students will analyze who tells the story, what gets remembered (or forgotten), and how memory fuels public debate today.

Faculty Leaders: Dr. Woody Register & Dr. Liesl Allingham

Additional Information: Contact Dr. Allingham: lialling@sewanee.edu

How to Apply: Interested students can submit the short Unsettling Memories Interest Form

 Scholarship funding is available

Program Overview

Academics

All students on the program will take the following course

  • HIST XXX:  Unsettling Memories: Slavery and Holocaust Memorialization in Transatlantic Perspective (4 credits)

An interdisciplinary examination of how people in two nations confront the legacies of violence through public memory, commemoration, and cultural debate in the past and present. Focusing on responses to the Holocaust in Germany and slavery’s legacies in the United States, students analyze monuments, landscapes, museums, and public discourse through site visits in Tennessee, Alabama, and Berlin. Informed by the study of memoir, theory, journalism, and public history as well as in-person visits to memorial sites, they examine how memory is or has been constructed, contested, and mobilized, and how artists, activists, scholars, and ordinary citizens intervene in dominant narratives to reimagine historical responsibility and shape collective understanding of the past.

This 4-credit course counts toward: History major/minor (elective at or above the 200 level), International and Global Studies major/minor (elective, attributes ITGS and ITGP), or German and German Studies major/minor (elective attribute GEEL). No Prerequisites; All Majors are Welcome!

Housing

In Sewanee, students reside in university dorms. In Berlin, single/double rooms at a safe, central, well-reviewed hostel.

Student Support

On-site support for this program provided by Sewanee Faculty

  • International Health Insurance through GeoBlue
  • Excursions
  • Housing
  • Scholarship Funding

Upcoming Information Sessions

  • Tuesday, November 11 @ 7 p.m. in Gailor 212
  • Tuesday, December 2 @ 2 p.m. in Gailor 212