This senior/graduate seminar is an exploration in the anthropological approaches to the study of history, memory, and silence: the silences of the empty archives, the ruptured oral historical accounts, and the fragments of debris and ruins. The seminar focuses on history and history-making that account for the experiences, lives, and emotions of underrepresented groups, undocumented individuals, and un-archived events. The readings are anchored on Walter Benjamin’s concept of history to navigate around the following questions: How do we trace and represent the past in the aftermath of violence and destruction? How do historians and anthropologists conduct their research when the evidence is destroyed? Ultimately, what constitutes an ‘evidence’ for history, and how could we entertain material and immaterial remnants of the past to expand our understanding of the ‘archives’? Overall, the seminar invites participants to think of the role of historians and anthropologists as storytellers who are perpetually struggling with the politics of representation. Second, we read historical ethnographies with an eye on the text, research methods, and as a genre of writing about the past.