CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch Speaks in Chile

CSSD Director and William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature Marianne Hirsch visited Chile in early June to speak at several events, including a colloquium on Postmemory and a seminar entitled “The Future of the Past,” organized by Universidad Católica.

During the seminar, Hirsch, together with Leo Spitzer, Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth, presented a lecture entitled “School Pictures in Troubled Times,” in which they examined several aspects of school photos taken during periods of persecution and resistance in history.

In addition, at the colloquium “Postmemory: Conversations on Human Rights and Migrations,” Hirsch discussed the role of feminism in memory studies as well as the ways in which memories of violent histories can be utilized for a better future.

A complete report from Columbia Global Center | Santiago can be read here.

Congratulations to CSSD graduate fellows and assistants on defending their dissertations

Congratulations to the following Ph.D. candidates who have defended their dissertations and received their Ph.D.s this year! All of these students have been invaluable members of working groups at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, as graduate fellows or graduate assistants:

From the Women Mobilizing Memory working group:

Nicole Gervasio (English)

Andrew Crow (English)

Alyssa Greene (German)

From the Social Justice After the Welfare State working group:

Anna Halperin (History)

George Aumoithe (History)

From the Pacific Climate Circuits working group:

Patrick Nason (Anthropology)

Diana Taylor elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Diana Taylor, project director of the CSSD working group Women Mobilizing Memory, has been elected as an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow. A University Professor at NYU, Taylor is the founding director of NYU’s Hemispheric Institute and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures and in the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts. Taylor, a Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of many award-winning books such as Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (University Press of Kentucky, 1991) and The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2003), among other publications.

Since its founding in 1780, the American Academy has served the nation as a champion of scholarship, civil dialogue, and useful knowledge. As one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, the Academy convenes leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to address critical challenges facing our global society.

Professor Taylor joins the Academy’s membership of 4,900 Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members, a list that includes many of the most accomplished scholars and practitioners worldwide.

Women Mobilizing Memory explores the politics of memory in the aftermath of the atrocities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in comparative global perspective. The international working group analyzes the strategies by which women artists, scholars and activists have succeeded in mobilizing the memory of gender-based violence to promote redress, social justice, and a democratic future.

Los Angeles Central Library hosts exhibits inspired by the work of Marianne Hirsch

The Los Angeles Central Library is currently hosting two exhibits inspired by the work of CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch, both examining the generational trauma of the Armenian Genocide. The main exhibit, entitled “Nonlinear Histories”, is co-curated by Isin Önol, member of the Working Group for the CSSD Project Women Mobilizing Memory (for which Hirsch served as Co-Director), and features the work of fellow Working Group member Silvina Der Meguerditchian. The exhibit is inspired by Hirsch’s groundbreaking work on postmemory, and is the first exhibit to use postmemory as a framework for examining the Armenian Genocide. In addition to “Nonlinear Histories”, a second exhibit, “Prosperity, Loss, and Survival: A Photographic Journey from the Dildilian Family Archive”, is also being displayed at the library.

As part of the exhibit, Silvina Der Meguerditchian contributed “Treasures”, a work constructed from 130 pages of health remedies composed by the artist’s great-grandmother, a genocide survivor. Der Meguerditchian’s piece aims to provide “a space to reflect and see because lots of second and third generations were silenced by trauma, but our grand kids can now articulate a lot of things”.

In addition to serving as inspiration for the exhibit, Hirsch delivered its opening lecture, entitled “Forty Days and More: Connective Histories.” The exhibit, which opened on March 17, runs through May 6.

Jean Howard Delivers the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University

CSSD project director Jean Howard gave the Dean Family Lecture at Wake Forest University on "Edward Bond's Bingo: Shakespeare Revisited."

Professor Howard also led a seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America in Los Angeles on "Shakespeare and Marx Now."

Jean Howard is a renowned Shakespeare scholar and has written many books and essays on early modern literature, Shakespeare, feminist studies, and theater history. She is a co-director for the CSSD projects Engendering the Archive, Women Mobilizing Memory, and Reframing Gendered Violence.

The Dean Family Speaker Series is hosted by The Department of English at Wake Forest University and brings nationally and internationally-recognized scholars to campus. It encourages critical conversations and dialogue related to the study of English.

Marianne Hirsch delivers keynote address at Memory Studies Association Conference

CSSD Director Marianne Hirsch delivered the keynote address at the second annual Memory Studies Association Conference, December 15, 2017.

Hirsch’s address, “Stateless Memories”, further develops her pioneering work in the field of memory studies, calling into question the ethnocentrism of dominant memory cultures and looking instead for progressive ways of developing collective memories outside the bounds of national monuments.

Marianne Hirsch is Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference, as well as William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is co-director of the CSSD projects Women Mobilizing Memory, Engendering the Archive, and Reframing Gendered Violence.

Women Mobilizing Memory Fellow Alisa Solomon publishes "What Does It Mean to Remember AIDS?"

The day before World AIDS Day 2017, Women Mobilizing Memory Fellow Alisa Solomon published an article in The Nation reflecting on how we remember AIDS and its impact: "What Does It Mean to Remember AIDS?" Read the full article here:

"What Does It Mean to Remember AIDS?"

Alisa Solomon is co-editor of the forthcoming Women Mobilizing Memory book resulting from the research of this CSSD working group.