Legacies of Violence and Genocide: Can Memorials and Museums Help Us Build a Better Future?

The Center for the Humanities presents a Holocaust Memorial Lecture: Legacies of Violence and Genocide: Can Memorials and Museums Help Us Build a Better Future?

Can memory prevent injustice and violence? Panelists of this virtual roundtable will discuss the role of museums and memorials in building the bridge between history, understanding, empathy, and action. In recent years, questions about therepresentation of history in public spaces have become more pressing than ever.

The legacies of the Holocaust, colonial violence, and racist exploitation are at the center of resulting debates and actions that range from redesigning commemorative and exhibition spaces to toppling monuments. Can museums and memorials fulfill the tasks of remembrance, reconciliation, and prevention that genocidal and other instances of mass violence pose? The roundtable takes the history of the Holocaust as a starting point for a conversation on the capacity of public portrayals of complex histories of violence to shape a more just future.

Erin McGlothlin is the chair of Germanic Languages and Literatues and professor of German and Jewish Studies at Washington University and will be moderating this panel discussion.  

Roundtable participants for this event include:

  • Avril Alba, Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilization in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, University of Sydney
  • Zahava D. Doering, editor emerita of Curator: The Museum Journal
  • David Cunningham, professor and chair of Sociology at Washington University