Events
“Small Acts of Repair: The Unclaimed Legacy of the Romanian Holocaust”
25 April 2013, University of Southern California Shoah Foundation
Marianne Hirsch will discuss “postmemory”, a term that describes the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before – to experiences they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up.
RSVP online for this event. For more information, please visit http://sfi.usc.edu/events/4555
“Creation and Postmemory Conference”
10-12 April 2013, Maison Francaise, Columbia University
In connection with this conference, there will be an art exhibit April 10-May 4: Cambodia, The Memory Workshop: Artworks by Vann Nath, Séra, and Emerging Cambodian Artists. Official exhibit opening April 10, 6-8 p.m. Registration required, please click here.
Conference opens on April 10th at 2:30 p.m. with keynote by Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University) and Leo Spitzer (Dartmouth College): Small Acts of Repair: The Unclaimed Legacy of Transnistria
The aftermath of mass murders is felt not only by the victims and their families but also by their descendants, who find themselves in the paradoxical situation of suffering the psychological effects of events they did not experience themselves.
It is this transmission of trauma that the notion of postmemory – developed in 1997 by Marianne Hirsch in her book Family Frames: Photography Narrative and Postmemory, and more recently in her 2012 book The Generation of Postmemory — attempts to describe. Hirsch demonstrates how an indirect form of memory may develop in individuals who did not experience a traumatic event personally but feel its active presence within their family.
Since postmemory is unable to draw on precise recollections, great importance is given to imagination and creation. Art has a major part to play in this process, since in some cases it is only through the works created by survivors that subsequent generations can access the traumatic event. Art also constitutes an ideal means for later generations to attempt to imagine an unknown past and discover its implications in their lives.
The conference and art exhibit are part of the city-wide Season of Cambodia Festival. The events at the Maison Francaise aim to examine how the arts and other creative forms harness indirect memory and ensure its transmission through a variety of archives and traces. Although the Cambodian genocide will be the primary focus, other genocides of the 20th century, such as the Holocaust and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, will be discussed in a comparative perspective.
For conference program and more information, please visit Season of Cambodia Festival: Creation and Postmemory or http://seasonofcambodia.org/event/art-healing-and-transformation/
“Practices of Memory Conference”
1 March 2013, Fordham University
For more information, please visit http://www.fordham.edu/practices_of_memory
“Generation of Postmemory” Discussion and Celebration
11 February 2013, 7-9pm, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, NYU (20 Cooper Square, 5th floor. Please note: Photo ID is required to enter NYU buildings)
Join us for a book discussion and celebration on “The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2012), Roundtable with Marianne Hirsch, Andreas Huyssen, Kellie Jones, Leo Spitzer and Marita Sturken, Moderated by Diana Taylor
“Memory Unbound” Lecture Series
13 December 2012, Ghent, Belgium
For more information, please visit http://www.litra.ugent.be/events.html#memory_unbound
Residency at Liguria Study Center
15 October 2012 – 17 November 2012, Bogliasco, Italy
For more information, please visit http://www.bfny.org/
“Recollection, Retribution, Reconciliation: A Roundtable Discussion”
4 October 2012, 8:00pm, Levis Faculty Center, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
Featuring Karen Engle (U of Texas), Judith Halberstam (USC), Marianne Hirsch (Columbia U), and Michael Rothberg (Illinois). Moderated by Brett Kaplan (Illinois)
For more information, please visit http://www.jewishculture.illinois.edu/events/lectures/
“Framing Lives”: 8th Biennial International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) Conference
17-20 July 2012, Canberra, Australia
For more information, please visit http://www.theiaba.org/?page_id=187
East European Memory Studies Research Group Seminar
Wed 9 May 2012, 5:00pm CRASSH, University of Cambridge
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer (Columbia University)
‘Small Acts of Repair:’
The Unclaimed Legacy of Transnistria’
For more information, please visit http://www.memoryatwar.org/events