Talk: The Armenian Genocide, Poetry of Witness, and Postmemory by Peter Balakian

• Event Date: Monday, April 18, 2016
• Time: 4:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Part of the CAS/MillerComm Lecture Series

The past year has marked the centenary of the Armenian Genocide. In this presentation, the award-winning writer Peter Balakian will ask how literature can witness and commemorate historical trauma. He will begin by discussing the impact of the Armenian genocide on several major Armenian poets of the 1915 generation. Considering the genocide’s impact on his own poetry, Balakian will then reflect on how the trauma of 1915 has echoed across generations and emerged as a version of postmemory—the belated remembrance of the victims’ descendants.

The CAS/MillerComm public events series brings to campus people who offer unique cross-disciplinary contributions to the intellectual and cultural life of the university.

This Center for Advanced Study event is hosted by the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies in conjunction with the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Department of English, Department of French and Italian, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Department of History, Department of Religion, European Union Center, Program in Comparative and World Literature, Program in Jewish Culture and Society, Spurlock Museum, and The Future of Trauma and Memory Studies Reading Group.