Dealing with Difficult Pasts: Ethics, Collections, and Public Spaces

Co-Hosted by the University of Virginia (Jewish Studies Program, The Americas Center, Corcoran Department of History, Department of African American and African Studies, and the Aesthetics of Democracy Working Group of the Karsh Institute of Democracy); the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and the Centre for Public History at Queen’s University Belfast. This project is supported by the Page-Barbour and Richards Lecture Committee.

March 17

Public Forum

South Meeting Room | Newcomb Hall

Register here for this program, which is free and open to the public.

9:30–10:45 Panel 1: Voices Left Out

Robert M. Ehrenreich Director, Academic Research and Dissemination (USHMM)

Olwen Purdue Professor of Social History; Director, Centre for Public History (Queen's University Belfast)

Jason Young Associate Professor of History, Director, Inst. for the Humanities (University of Michigan)

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum scholar Robert M. Ehrenreich will speak about an unusual collection of objects hidden by Jews in Slovakia, shortly before their deportation. Queen’s University Belfast Professor Olwen Purdue will speak about working among deeply divided communities on either side of west Belfast’s “peace walls” to co-produce an oral history archive of working-class life. University of Michigan Professor Jason R. Young will reflect on "Hear Me Now,” a landmark traveling exhibition showcasing ceramic materials produced by enslaved men and women in Edgefield, South Carolina.

10:45–11 Break

11–12:15 Panel 2: Family Histories

Tamar Aizenberg Ph.D. Candidate, Near Eastern and Judaic Studies (Brandeis University)

Nemata Blyden Armstead Robinson Prof. of 19th Century African American History (University of Virginia)

Briony Widdis Postdoctoral Fellow (Queen's University Belfast)

The “Family Histories” panel of the “Dealing with Difficult Pasts” conference includes presentations by Tamar Aizenberg (Brandeis University) on how grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and grandchildren of Holocaust perpetrators conceptualize familial and collective history, Nemata Blyden (UVA) on how a Black family imagines/reimagines space and place, and Briony Widdis (Queen’s University Belfast) on family colonial photography and the ethics of autoethnography.

12:15-1 Lunch

1–2:15 Panel 3: Difficult Histories

Kevin Gaines Professor, History and African American and African Studies (University of Virginia)

Ruth Mandel Professor of Anthropology (University College London)

Laura McAtackney Professor in Radical Humanities and Archaeology (University College Cork, Ireland)

2:15–2:30 Break

2:30-3:45 Panel 4: Ethics of Data

Caroline Sturdy Colls Professor (University of Huddersfield)

Rachel Deblinger Director, Modern Endangered Archives Program (UCLA Library)

Jennie Williams Postdoctoral Fellow (University of Virginia)

3:45–4:30 Reception