Kronsberg Memorial Lecture - The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between

In this slide-lecture based on his most recent book, The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between, James Young will trace what he calls an “arc of memorial vernacular” from Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial to Germany’s Holocaust counter-monuments, to Berlin’s Denkmal for Europe’s Murdered Jews, to the September 11 Memorial in NYC. Of particular interest to Young has been how nations commemorate against the grain of their national legacies, how nations remember their victims and their national shame. The question is pertinent to Charleston today, as the community debates how to address aspects of its past that are shameful to many, and what place figures like John C. Calhoun ought to occupy in the collective memory of the state.

James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has taught since 1988, and Founding Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst. He also chaired the Department of Judaic & Near Eastern Studies between 1998 and 2010, when he founded the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst. Young has also taught at New York University as a Dorot Professor of English and Hebrew/Judaic Studies (1984-88), at Bryn Mawr College in the History of Religion, and at the University of Washington, Harvard University, and Princeton University as a visiting professor. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California in 1983.

The 2017 Kronsberg Memorial Lecture will also serve as the official launch of the Arnold Nemirow Fund for Holocaust Studies, which in subsequent semesters will fund student research projects relating to the Holocaust.

The Milton Kronsberg Lecture Series began in the Fall of 1998 as a result of a generous endowment by the Kronsberg family. In the Fall of 2002, the series became the Milton and Freddie Kronsberg Memorial Lecture Series because of the passing of Freddie Kronsberg z”l. The series honors the Kronsbergs’ lifelong commitment to Jewish ideas and values.