Panel Discussion: Visual Memory in a Time of Endless War
The Panel Discussion will take place on Thursday, February 11 from 4-6PM at 808 Gallery at Boston University.
Presented in conjunction with Paul Emmanuel: Remnants, this panel will explore collective experiences of loss and mourning and processes of memory and memorialization in times of global conflict and war.
Supported by the Boston University Center for the Humanities
Panelists:
Pamela Allara, Associate Professor Emerita of Brandeis University
Dr. Pamela Allara is the author of Pictures of People: Alice Neel’s American Portrait Gallery (University Press of New England/Brandeis University, 1997) and a co-curator of “Coexistence: Contemporary Cultural Production in South Africa” for the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis and the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Her recent research has investigated issues such as whiteness and gender identity in contemporary South African art. She is currently the Visiting Researcher at Boston University African Studies Center.
Shannen Hill, Associate Curator for African Art, Head of Department, Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and Pacific Islands, Baltimore Museum of Art
Dr. Shannen Hill is the author of Biko’s Ghost: The Iconography of Black Consciousness (Minnesota, 2015), a book that brings to life a vital stream of political expression that has long been suppressed — through both state censorship in South Africa and the domineering discourse of non-racialism — by interweaving visual culture, post/anti colonial histories, and political science. This year she is also a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art, at work on a book about visual histories of gold and diamond mining in South Africa.
Paul Landau, Professor of History, University of Maryland
Dr. Paul Landau is a historian of southern Africa and the author of Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400 to 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He has written about images, ideas, and perceptions among ordinary people in the past, for instance, in “Transformations in Consciousness” for the Cambridge History of South Africa (2010), and in his co-edited book, Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Univ. of Cal., 2002). His most recent work focuses on revolutionaries in the early and mid-20th centuries in South Africa, building toward his coming book, Spear: Nelson Mandela and the Revolutionaries, 1960-63. Since 2011, he has also been a Fellow in Historical Studies at the University of Johannesburg.
Timothy Longman, Director, Boston University African Studies Center and Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Boston University
Dr. Timothy Longman’s Professor Longman’s research interests center on state-society relations, focusing in particular on religion and politics, identity politics, human rights, transitional justice, and gender. His book Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press, and his book Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda, will be published by Cambridge in 2016.
Susan Werbe, Co-Creator, The Great War Theatre Project: Messengers of a Bitter Truth and Letters That You Will Not Get: The Great War Song Cycle.
Ms. Susan Werbe is the executive producer and dramaturg for The Great War Theatre Project: Messengers of a Bitter Truth, performed in Boston, New York, and Letchworth (UK). For thirty years, she has pursued her interest in the social, cultural, and political history of early 20th Century England, including a focus on the broader international social and cultural history of World War One. She served as the dramaturg for New York-based Vilda Chaya Collective’s production of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day and mentored Boston Arts Academy student dramaturgs for Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Werbe holds a BA in English Literature from New York University and a Master’s in Education from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst.