Scholar Amy Sodaro to Discuss the Memorialization of Atrocity

March 15, 2011

On Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 1 p.m. in the JSC Stearns Student Center Performance Space, Amy Sodaro, a PhD in sociology candidate at the New School for Social Research and program coordinator with the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies in NYC, will give a talk on the topic of her dissertation: “Exhibiting Atrocity: Facing the Past in the New Memorial Museums.”

From Germany, the U.S. and Israel, to Rwanda, Cambodia and Argentina, nations and groups attempting to deal with genocide and other conflict – sometimes recent, sometimes in the distant past – increasingly use museums as one of the key mechanisms for doing so. Sodaro’s dissertation examines how societies use museums to come to terms with horrific events in the past and to help prevent future violence. In her talk, Sodaro will use examples of memorial museums around the world to examine the goals and efforts behind the museums, vis-a-vis post-conflict memory, truth, justice, reconciliation as well as the complex politics behind their creation.

Sodaro is the co-editor of Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Culture and Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and has published articles on the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in Rwanda.

The talk is free and open to the public. For more information about the event, call or emailSherlock.Terry@jsc.edu, 635-1408.