Fisher Center Lectures : Marianne Hirsch & The Generation of Postmemory GENEVA ROOM - SMITH LIBRARY - HWS CAMPUS, GENEVA, NY (WEOS) - Do photographs act as testimonial objects between today and yesterday, this generation and previous ones, memory and postmemory, personal and cultural recollection, gender and generation?

On Tuesday March 11th, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender of Columbia University, Marianne Hirsch will look at postmemory and the place of photographs as a medium of transmission of memories from one generation to the next. Postmemory describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their birth but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right.

Focusing on the remembrance of the Holocaust, Marianne Hirsch elucidates the generation of postmemory and its reliance on photography as a primary medium of trans-generational transmission of trauma. Identifying tropes that most potently mobilize the work of postmemory, she examines the role of the family as a space of transmission and the function of gender as an idiom of remembrance.
WEOS will broadcast the presentation live. © Copyright 2009, WEOS