Ellsworth Lecture to Explore ‘Arc’ of Memorials

March 5, 2015

James Young, Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will present Johnson State College’s 31st annual Ellsworth Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2, in 207 Bentley Hall. Young will discuss “The Memorial Arc Between Berlin’s Denkmal and New York City’s 9/11 Memorial.” The event is free and open to the public.

Also known as the Holocaust Memorial, Denkmal remembers the Jewish victims of the Nazi atrocities in Europe during World War II.

Young has written widely on public art, memorials and national memory. His articles, reviews and op-ed essays have appeared in numerous newspapers, including The New York Times Magazine and The Los Angeles Times, as well as in scholarly journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, New Literary History, PMLA and many others.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities Exhibition planning, implementation and research grants, and Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Grants.

His lecture is sponsored by the Ellsworth Trust, a private foundation established in 1983 and endowed by Professor Ellsworth. The trust enriches higher education at Johnson State through scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students, sponsorships that bring visiting scholars to campus for lectures and seminars, and other multicultural events, grants and fellowships.

For more information, contact Lauren Philie, director of Development & Alumni Relations, lauren.philie@jsc.edu or 802-635-1657.