Event: Memory in the Disciplines: A Graduate Student Symposium (April 24, 2015 9:45am – 6pm, Stony Brook Manhattan, New York)

Memory in the Disciplines: A Graduate Student Symposium
Date: April 24, 2015 9:45am – 6pm
Location: Stony Brook Manhattan, 387 Park Avenue South, 3rd Fl., New York

The Memory in the Disciplines project is a partnership between the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook (HISB), the Initiative for Historical Social Sciences (IHSS) and the departments of English and Sociology.

In recent years, a large and growing body of scholarship on the social and cultural dynamics of memory has gained recognition as a field: memory studies. Scholars from disciplines as diverse as Art History, History, Literature, Music Theory, Journalism, Performance Studies, Media Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Neuroscience and Sociology have common interests in this topic, but their discussions have been largely confined to their individual disciplines. Memory in the Disciplines invites these scholars to participate in a sustained exchange. We expect not only to learn more about memory, but also to explore the potential and limitations of interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.

10 Welcoming Remarks

Panel I: Literature and Memory (10:15-12:00)

Chair: Andrew Newman (English)

Discussant: TBD

Brian Hartwig (English), “Staging the Past: Tennessee Williams, Female Memory Narratives, and the Resurrection of Gay Male Power”

Francisco Delgado (English), “Memory and the Construction of Identity in Contemporary Multi-ethnic American Fiction”

Elisabeth Osborne (Hispanic Languages and Literature), “Family Fragments: Displacement and Postmemory in First-Person Documentaries of the Chilean Postdictatorship”

12-1 Lunch (Please register by April 15)

Panel II: Memory in the Social Sciences (1:00-2:45)

Chair: Daniel Levy (Sociology)
Discussant: Joyce Robbins (Sociology)

Daria Khlevnyuk (Sociology), “Modes of Cosmopolitanization of Memory”

Brittany A. Harman (Psychology), “Exaggeration (And Minimization) Contagion:  Do Eyewitnesses Adopt Each Other’s Reporting Style?”

Vanessa Lynn (Sociology), “Collective memories of the War on Drugs in NYC: Toward a discourse of responsibility and victimhood”

Coffee Break (2:45-3:00)

Panel III: Commemoration and the National (3-4:45)

Chair: Herman Lebovics (History)

Discussant: Adrian Perez Melgosa (Hispanic Studies)

Alena Pletneva Veller (Art History and Criticism), “Vernacular Memorials and the Collective Memory of September 11th”

Thomas Kozlowski (Hispanic Languages and Literature), “Condemnat a recordar: Salvador Puig Antich and Cultural Memory in Spain”

Sally Scott-Sabo, (Hispanic Languages and Literature), “Reading the remains of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war:  glimpses into a resurfacing past and glimmers of hope amidst tragedy, ambiguity and impunity”

Keynote and Final Discussion (5-6pm)

Jeffrey Olick (University of Virginia, Sociology and History)