Dual Seminar - "Memory School" & "Witness Trees and the Problem of Permanent Disaster Memorials"

IAS Visiting Fellows Professor Scott Knowles and Associate Professor Jacob Remes each deliver a seminar on their research as detailed below - 

Professor Scott Knowles - "Memory School"

Around the world school buildings are now frequently adapted from sites of disaster to sites of memory--transformed into sites of disaster pedagogy in the process. Bereaved families and disaster survivors are usually at the centre of the formation of Memory Schools and Memory Classrooms, but does their work inspire healing and reduce trauma? Focusing on cases from Uvalde (USA), Ishinomaki (Japan), and Ansan (South Korea) the lecture locates the politics that surround the school-to-memorial process. 

Associate Professor Jacob Remes - "Witness Trees and the Problem of Permanent Disaster Memorials"

Witness trees stand as living memorials to the events--a battle, a disaster, or a happier occasion--that happened near them. Like memory itself, a memory tree grows and changes over time, and eventually it will die. A vernacular memorial tradition that grew first from surveyors' cadastral maps and then from American Civil War battlefield memorial practices, witness trees offer a model to think about disaster memorials that avoids didactic over-interpretation or the literal concretization of a particular moment's memorial needs. Could witness trees be a model for disaster memorial practices? This talk takes up the examples of memorials to the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Explosion of 1917 and the "Miracle Pine" in Rikuzentakata, Japan, to think through how witness trees may be model disaster memorials.

Arrivals from 1:45pm for a 2:00pm  start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served beforehand from 1:00pm.

This event is hybrid format, please use the required booking button at the bottom of the page to choose either in-person or online attendance.
(Please note that in-person spaces are limited and booking is required, so we can manage numbers for catering and also the space inside International House)

By booking a place at this event, attendees agree to behave in a respectful manner such that everyone feels comfortable contributing as they wish. The IAS reserves the right to eject anyone who does not abide by this policy.

IAS seminars are typically recorded, minus any Q&A sessions at the end, again to encourage contributions. The recordings are then uploaded to our website on a Fellows bio page and/or Programme page, along with our IAS YouTube Channel. If you are not able to attend a seminar live, please do still register as we will email everyone who registered to let them know once the recordings are made available.