Trauma, Memory, and Material Culture: NMAI + USHMM in Dialogue
In a groundbreaking collaboration, TTTM has partnered with the National Museum of the American Indian and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - both in Washington, DC - on a five-day workshop (May 21 - 26, 2023) to discuss what the legacies of mass violence and oppression mean to Indigenous and Jewish people, and what they can learn from each other regarding approaches to museum collections, cultural heritage caretaking, and the preservation of historical memory.
See here for the full NMAI + USHMM workshop program.
team members
Dorota Głowacka
Dorota Głowacka, PhD teaches critical theory, gender theory, and Holocaust and genocide studies at the University of King’s College in Kjiputktuk/Halifax, Canada. She is the author of Po tamtej stronie: świadectwo, afekt, wyobraźnia (From the Other Side: Testimony, Affect, Imagination, Warsaw, 2017) and Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimonials, Ethics, and Aesthetics (Washington UP, 2012). She coedited Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (Nebraska UP, 2007) and Between Ethics and Aesthetics: Crossing the Boundaries (SUNY Press, 2002). Głowacka’s current research focuses on gender and genocide, and on the intersections of the Holocaust and settler colonial genocides in North America.
Role: Collaborator
Cluster: National Heritage and Traumatic Memory
Jason Chalmers
Jason Chalmers, PhD, is a settler, transdisciplinarian, and quilting enthusiast. Jason is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University where they are hosted by the Department of History and the School of Community & Public Affairs. Jason’s research explores how genocide commemoration interacts with settler colonialism, with particular focus on museums, monuments, and other sites of public memory. Their work has appeared in such journals as American Indian Quarterly, Socialist Studies, and Canadian Jewish Studies.
Krista Collier-Jarvis
Krista Collier-Jarvis is Mi’kmaw and a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at Dalhousie University located in Mi’kma’ki (Halifax). She is a Research Assistant for Dr. Dorota Głowacka as she develops the NMAI-USHMM workshop in Washington in spring 2023. Her research focuses on using Indigenous approaches to the Gothic, particularly how Indigenous approaches can “haunt back” against national narratives. She has publicly presented work on Missing and Murdered Women, Girls, and 2-Spirit People (MMIWG2S), settler colonial genocide, and de-museumification.
Role: Research Assistant
Cluster: National Heritage and Traumatic Memory
Erica Lehrer
Erica Lehrer, PhD is a sociocultural anthropologist and curator. She is a Professor in the departments of History and Sociology-Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal, and the Founding Director of its Curating and Public Scholarship Lab (CaPSL). Her publications include Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions (2016); Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland (2015); Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places (2013); and Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (2011), and numerous articles. Her exhibitions include “Souvenir, Talisman, Toy” (2013) and “Terribly Close: Polish Vernacular Artists Face the Holocaust” with Roma Sendyka, Wojciech Wilczyk, and Magdalena Zych (2018-19) at the Kraków Ethnographic Museum.
Role: Principal Investigator + Coordinating Committee
Cluster: National History and Traumatic Memory