Visual culturists track places of memory

Ways in which the concept of memory influences visual culture will be up for discussion at a free University of Wisconsin–Madison colloquium on Friday, Feb. 11, in Room 121, Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St.

Since 2001, an interdisciplinary coalition of faculty has studied visual culture. Currently, visual culture faculty represent some 40 academic units and study topics across four continents and four centuries.

Colloquium speakers, all UW–Madison visual culture faculty, and their subjects will be:

• Rob Nixon, professor of English, “What is a War Casualty?” 9 a.m. Nixon will look at war and amnesia, focusing on casualties forgotten “because they are insufficiently dramatic,” he says.
• Steve Stern, professor of history, “Places and Cover-Ups: Two Models of the Dialectics of Memory and Oblivion,” 9:30 a.m. Stern will base his talk on memory struggles surrounding the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
• Jacques Lezra, professor of English, “Tracking Memory,” 10:30 a.m. Lezra will investigate the mechanics of concentration or extermination camps.
• Vinay Dharwadker, associate professor of languages and cultures of Asia, “Figured Spaces of Time: Poets, Painters and Painter-Poets in Contemporary India,” 11 a.m. Dharwadker will discuss how visual artists reconfigure time.
• John Hitchcock, assistant professor of art, “Renewal/Strength: Reclaiming Frozen Ground,” 1 p.m. Hitchcock will address stories heard and issues surrounding life on indigenous lands in Oklahoma.
• Laurie Beth Clark, professor of art, “Trauma Memorials,” 1:30 p.m. Clark says that she began looking at these memorials in the days following Sept. 11, 2001, when impromptu memorials began appearing all over New York City. Since then she also has studied slave forts in Ghana, atomic bomb memorials in Japan, concentration camp sites in Germany and war memorials in Vietnam to understand how these places provide framework for trauma memory.
• Preeti Chopra, assistant professor of languages and cultures of Asia and environment, textile and design, “Locking Up the Gods, Bringing Out the Heroes: History, Preservation and Memory in Colonial Bombay,” 2:30 p.m. Chopra will discuss British attempts to control religious buildings, and the result.
• Thongchai Winichakul, professor of history, “Rivalry at the Thai Champs Elysees,” 3 p.m. Winichakul will discuss the grand avenue that a Thai monarch built in Bangkok after a visit he made to Paris, and the promenade’s new association with democracy after the monarchy was overthrown.

For more information, contact Megan Katz, (608) 262-1546, visualculture@education.wisc.edu, or visit http://www.visualculture.wisc.edu.