Place and Memory
This year the Center explores to burgeoning areas of scholarship in the Humanities in relationship to one another: studies of space and place and studies of memory. The program for the Center seeks to bring many disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to place and memory: arts and literature, cultural studies, history, anthropology, religious studies, philosophy, psychology, sociology, neuro-science. By bringing these various discourses into conversation, we hope to deepen our understanding of the complexity and variability of these two fundamental features of human consciousness.
Our program this year includes our Visiting Scholar, Lizette Larson-Miller, who earned her PhD in Liturgical History and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Prof. Larson-Miller currently teaches at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, where she pursues her scholarly interests in liturgical studies.
The Center will host a symposium April 21-23, 2010 on the topic of Place and Memory. We have invited accomplished scholars to participate in our inquiry. They are:
Derek Alderman, Associate Professor of Geography, East Carolina University;
Margaret Critchlow Rodman, Professor of Anthropology, York University, Toronto;
Lizette Larson Miller, Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Humanities at Grinnell;
James E. Young, Professor of English and Judaic Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Professor Young’s presentation will take place as part of the Scholar’s Convocation series.
During the symposium, the Center together with the Writers@Grinnell program and the Faulconer Gallery will co-sponsor a reading and performance by Terri Witek and Cyriaco Lopes.
Humanities Spring 2010 Symposium Schedule
PLACE AND MEMORY
April 21 – 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 21
8:00 pm, JRC 101
Margaret Critchlow Rodman, Professor of Anthropology, York University, Toronto
“Charting Memory's Course: Thoughts on Dynamics of Place in the South Pacific”
Thursday, April 22
11:00 am, JRC 101
James E. Young, Professor of English and Judaic Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“The Stages of Memory in Berlin and New York”
4:15 pm, JRC 101
Derek Alderman, Associate Professor of Geography, East Carolina University
“Memory, Race, and the Politics of Place: Naming Streets for Martin Luther King Jr.”
8:00 pm, Bucksbaum Center for the Performing Arts, Room 131
Poet Terri Witek and artist Cyriaco Lopes will present collaborative works and a performance. Sponsored by Writers @Grinnell, Faulkoner Gallery, and the Center for the Humanities.
Friday, April 23
12:00 pm, ARH 102
Lizette Larson-Miller, Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in the Humanities
“Public Places and Private Sorrows: Constructing Memory in Plain Sight”
Other programming at the Center for the Humanities includes a series of faculty reading group discussions focusing on place and memory, and also our regular Works-in-Progress Lunches for Grinnell College faculty, and visits to classrooms by guest scholars.
