The Arc of Memorial Vernacular: Between Berlin’s Denkmal and New York’s 9/11 Memorial
James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he directs the Institute for Holocause, Genocide, and Memory Studies. In this slide-lecture, Professor Young will trace what he calls “the memorial’s arc” from Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, to German Holocaust memorials, to the National September 11 Memorial in New York City. Professor Young served on the design juries for both Berlin’s Memorial for Europe’s Murdered Jews and for the 9/11 Memorial competition and will discuss these processes from his perspective as a juror.
Professor Young is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (1988), The Texture of Memory (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994, and At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000). At present, he is completing an insider’s story of the World Trade Center Memorial, entitled The Stages of Memory at Ground Zero: A Juror’s Report on the National September 11 Memorial.
Co-sponsored with the Humanities Institute and the Melton Center.
