DAYS AND MEMORY
A blog of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies

  • 7th Annual HGMS Graduate Student Conference

    Mar 16, 2026 3:00 pm by Brett Ashley Kaplan
    Poster featuring a watercolor painting of a blonde woman in sunglasses, a blonde girl, and a boy with brown hair having a picnic. In the background are two dogs. A skeleton embraces the woman from behind. The poster reads: "7th annual Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies Graduate Student Conference, Friday, March 27, 9:30–3:30pm CST, Levis Faulty Center, Room 210, 919 West Illinois Street, Urbana, IL, This annual conference showcases diverse and brilliant work within memory studies (broadly conceived) and furnishes an opportunity to share ideas and resources, to schmooze, and to connect. We invite everyone in the UIUC campus and community to join us! Vegetarian lunch will be served at 12:30pm. Keynote at 11am featuring Solomon Brager, author of Heavyweight. Questions? Please contact Brett Ashley Kaplan, Director of HGMS, bakaplan@illinois.edu. Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative & World Literature; the School of Art & Design; the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures; the Department of Gender & Women's Studies; the School of Literatures, Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics."

    Images

    • Poster featuring a watercolor painting of a blonde woman in sunglasses, a blonde girl, and a boy with brown hair having a picnic. In the background are two dogs. A skeleton embraces the woman from behind. The poster reads: "7th annual Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies Graduate Student Conference, Friday, March 27, 9:30–3:30pm CST, Levis Faulty Center, Room 210, 919 West Illinois Street, Urbana, IL, This annual conference showcases diverse and brilliant work within memory studies (broadly conceived) and furnishes an opportunity to share ideas and resources, to schmooze, and to connect. We invite everyone in the UIUC campus and community to join us! Vegetarian lunch will be served at 12:30pm. Keynote at 11am featuring Solomon Brager, author of Heavyweight. Questions? Please contact Brett Ashley Kaplan, Director of HGMS, bakaplan@illinois.edu. Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative & World Literature; the School of Art & Design; the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures; the Department of Gender & Women's Studies; the School of Literatures, Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics."


    7th Annual HGMS Graduate Student Colloquium

    Friday March 27th, 210 Levis 9:30am–3:30pm U.S. Central Time

    Levis Faculty Center, Room 210, 919 West Illinois Street, Urbana, IL



    9am: Coffee and pastries


    9:30-10:45: Generational Resonances: Memory through Sound and Silence

    Memory in Thread: The Quiet Archive of Sujani, Aishi Bhattacharya

    Letters to Fathers and Mothers: Gendering Memory and Mourning in Manal’s “Baba,” MacKenzie Guthrie

    may i remember this place and time with you: Vietnamese American Oral History and Negotiating the Inheritance of Memory and Debt through Kinship, michelle lê

    Chair: Tai Wakabayashi


    11-12:15: Keynote, Solomon Brager, author of the graphic novel Heavyweight


    Lunch 12:30-1:30 (vegetarian lunch from Dubai Grill will be served to all conference participants) 


    1:30-2:45 Mapping the National? 

    Against Erasure: Protest and the Making of Emergency Memory in Iran, Zahra Meshkani

    Legacies of Suffering: The Limitations of Peace Rhetorics in Northern Ireland, Isabel Zuniga

    Forming Early 20th Century American Identity: Comparing Anzia Yezierska and Antonio Pedreira, Trinidad Gómez

    Chair: Matthew Fam

     

    2:50-3:30 Genres of Postmemory

    Politics of Visual Memory and Archive: The 1947 Partition in Context, Ragini Chakraborty

     The Epistolary Form in Victoria Chang’s Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief, Hannah Charity

    Chair: Brett Kaplan