UPDATE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Erica Lehrer will not be able to participate in this month's Memory Economies Symposium. For those interested in Dr. Lehrer and her research, the Wirth Institute hopes to organize another visit to the UAlberta campus later this fall. Keep an eye on our website for more details.
The Memory Economies Symposium will take place May 25-26 at the University of Alberta.
"Memory Economies" is a two-day public symposium, organized by Professors Terri Tomsky (English & Film Studies) and Susanne Luhmann (Women's & Gender Studies), bringing together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to examine the complex, and so far rarely examined, relationship between memory and economy.
Erica Lehrer, a socio‑cultural anthropologist and curator, will be presenting on what she calls "the curatorial dream" based on her work on Jewish communities in Poland. She is currently Associate Professor in History and Sociology‑Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Museum & Heritage Studies.
She is the author of Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places (Indiana University Press 2013), editor (with Michael Meng) of Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland, (with Cynthia Milton) of Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places, and (with Shelley Butler) of Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions.
In 2013 curated the exhibit Souvenir, Talisman, Toy at the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow, and in 2014 published the accompanying book Lucky Jews and the online exhibit www.luckyjews.com.
For more on Erica, click here.