Lunchtime Talk
Fri 9 Jul 2021 13:00-14:00 at Youtube Live
The Politics of Memorialisation
How do we living humans negotiate the politics of memorialisation for the dead? How does the dead body function as a technology of memory in and around monuments and memorials?
The National Covid Memorial Wall - Photo Credit John Cameron - Unsplash
Speaker
John Troyer
Dr. John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialization practices, postmortem bioethics, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and…This Lunchtime talk will be broadcast Live on Watershed's Youtube Channel.
Within this Lunchtime Talk, Dr John Troyer explores questions such as; What is the position of the human corpse in monuments and memorials built for the dead? And how does the dead body function as a technology of memory in and around monuments and memorials?
John will also be looking into the term technology of memory, suggesting the production of cultural memory “…through objects, images, and representations,” that is taken from Marita Sturken’s writing about sites such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
This talk builds on these ideas and focuses on the following question: How do we living humans negotiate the politics of memorialisation for the dead? This is an old question but a question with new urgency given the ongoing death toll produced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the individuals now grieving those deaths.
Join us, on Friday 9th July, 13:00- 14:00 for the talk and to take part in the discussion afterwards.
