Memory and Materiality

Course Conference

December 12, 4 – 7, RI hall 108

What is the difference between memory and knowledge of the past? This conference explores theoretical approaches to memory and materiality.  Drawing on the mnemonic turn in history, archaeology and material culture studies, students will present papers addressing key questions; How were past objects perceived and used? How are landscapes and architecture tied to concepts of the past and memory? Building on our classes’ reading of Halbwachs,  Bergson and Latour, we will present a series of case studies to illustrate how considering memory and materiality as fundamentally entwined can shift the terms of analysis.

The speakers will be going for dinner at flatbread after the conference, please RSVP to [email protected] if you would like to join us.

Program of speakers

4.00 Rose Rowson – Cultural Production, Residual Memory: A (Media) Archaeology of Traumatic Landscapes

4.25 Talley Murphy – Memorializing Antifascist Resistance (or, the Berliner Ensemble tricks us into thinking that Naziism is over)

4.50 Maria Averkiou – Material Speculation: ISIS; Artifacts and the Proliferation of Aura(s) in the Age of 3D Reproduction (and Cultural Heritage Destruction)

5.15 Kelly Moss – Remodeling or Remembering? Hybridity in Spectacle Spaces of the Roman Imperial Cult

5.40 Mark Agostini – Quarrying Time and Memory: Images of the Past, Present, and Future in Solnhofen Lithographic Limestone

6.05 Flannery McIntyre – Landscape, Collective Memory, and the Anglo-Saxon Execution Cemetery at Walkington Wold

6.30 Alex Marko – In Bloom: Epistemology and Ontology of Blaschka Verisimilitude

For conference abstracts, click here.