Syracuse University presents two-day conference on “Framing Public Memory” Sept. 28-29

Syracuse University presents two-day conference on “Framing Public Memory” Sept. 28-29September 17, 2001Judy Holmesjlholmes@syr.edu

The Department of Speech Communication in the College of Visual and Performing Arts will present “Framing Public Memory,” Sept. 28 and 29 in the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center. The two-day conference is expected to draw leading, national scholars whose work engages the question of memory.

Faculty and students who are interested in attending all or part of the conference should contact Kendall Phillips, assistant professor of speech communication, at 443-2883 or e-mail kphillip@syr.edu.

The keynote speaker will be James Young, chair and professor of Judaic Studies and professor of English at the University of Massachusetts. Young will present “Memory, Counter-memory, and the End of the Monument,” at 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 28. Young is the author of “At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press) and of “The Texture of Memory” (Yale University Press), which received the National Jewish Book Award.

Other speakers include Samuel Gruber, research director of the U.S. Commission on America’s Heritage Abroad, who will present “Sites of Shame: The Ways We Remember What We Prefer to Forget;” and Vivian Rose, chief of Visitor Services and Cultural Resources at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, Seneca Falls, who will present “Gender, Memory and Commemoration: Women, History and Historic Sites.

Gruber and Rose will present from 2:40 to 4 p.m. Sept. 28.

Additional topics to be covered include, “On the Boundaries of Memory,” presented by Barbie Zelizer of the University of Pennsylvania; “Cultural Frames of Memory and Responsibility,” presented by Barry Schwartz of the University of Georgia; “A Timeless Now: The Rhetorical Repetitions of Memory,” presented by Bradford Vivian of Vanderbilt University; “Making Memory Public: Teaching the UT Tower Shooting and Public Memory,” presented by Rosa Eberly of the University of Texas, Austin; and “Political Scandal and Public Memory: Stubborn Stains and the Fabric of Contemporary American Public Culture,” presented by Barbara Biesecker of the University of Iowa.