Interdisciplinary/Transatlantic

presentation |seminar | previously | events| fellowships

Our memory program brings together many of the world’s leading academic experts and researchers on memory (in its historical, socio-cultural and neurological manifestations) with top museum professionals, artists and other “memory workers” whose charge is the development and operation of contemporary memorial museums. In doing so, we will combine theory and practice both to study questions of memory and memorialization and to place those questions before the public at large. The partnership will create a formal, ongoing platform for exchanges across national, professional and disciplinary boundaries, and it will play a major role in training graduate students working in these areas. Its main objectives are to deepen our understanding of the relationship between history and memory, to examine the workings of memory as a neurological phenomenon, and to apply these intellectual and scientific understandings to the work of two key historical museums: the September 11 Memorial Museum, now in its planning stages, and the Memorial de Caen, one of Europe’s most important memorial museums. Thanks to the grant we have been awarded by the Partner University Fund in 2009 and thanks to the the unfailing support of the French Embassy in Washington and the French Cultural Mission in New York, our program will reinforce the Franco-American academic hub on memory studies. Last year's transatlantic seminar hold in both Paris and New York focused on "Selective memory, forgetting, concealment and denial". This year will be focusing on "Wounded memory"

Edward Berenson & Denis Peschanski, Program leaders

Cliff Chanin (9/ 11 Memorial & Museum) & Stéphane Grimaldi (Mémorial de Caen)