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

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  • 5th Annual Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies Annual Graduate Student Conference

    From the decimated landscapes of the Nevada nuclear testing sites to the quiet mapping of grief on notecards, from Turkish-German pop cultural negotiations of identity to photo-portraits of Armenians who survived the genocide, from women and horses in captivity to Columbian water arts, and from ancient stories of moral injury to mining in Minnesota, this year’s annual Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies (HGMS) graduate student conference was perhaps the most wide-ranging yet.

  • Kevork Mourad and Helen Makdoumian visit the University of Illinois, April 24-25, 2023

    Kevork Mourad was born in Syria, studied art in Yerevan, Armenia, and now lives in upstate New York. His intensely evocative, beautiful work explores migration, memory, and place; trauma, community, and isolation. History and its often violent over-writing, the competing claims of inheritance and presence, the motherland and the currentland. Time, engagement, and distance. He collaborates with dancers, musicians, and other visual artists to create stunning multimedia projects. He has worked with Yo-Yo Ma, Kinan Azmeh, Kim Kashkashian, and exhibited and/or performed at Carnegie Hall, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tabari Art Space in Dubai, and many other august museums and performance spaces all over the world. 

    His projects invite us to see and feel the spaces he evokes but also to come in, to experience your own—our own—memories, reactions, and emotions as we travel through the work. As Kevork said in one of his many videos (and I urge you to check out his website which offers a vast archive of at least some of his myriad projects), “I’m interested in knowing what you’re going to feel when you are in front of the piece, as a citizen of the world.”

  • Creating "Paintings of Hope"

    This past spring semester students had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Syrian- Armenian artist, Kevork Mourad. I attended the workshop, curious to learn from and observe a professional artist at work. Unsure what exactly to expect, I was pleasantly surprised by the accessibility and ingenuity of the process Mourad uses to create complex, meaningful work.  

  • Race, Migration, Memory Symposium Schedule

    This is the detailed schedule for the Race, Migration, Memory Symposium on November 3, 2023 at 210 Levis Faculty Center, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

  • Deep Breath: Meditations on the Race, Migration, and Memory Symposium

    An essay about the Race, Migration, Memory conference by Mackenzie Guthrie, Graduate Student in Comparative and World Literature

  • Book Launch Critical Memory Studies: New Approaches, edited by Brett Ashley Kaplan

    Deep Breath: Meditations on the Race, Migration, and Memory Symposium

  • Greenfield Lynch Lecture: Ben Lerner in Conversation with Brett Kaplan

    Greenfield Lynch Lecture: Ben Lerner in Conversation with Brett Kaplan