Promoting collaborative research on ideas
central to the pressing issues of our time.
Tuesday, September 15
Noon – 1:00 p.m.
124 Sparks Building
Lunch will be provided
Tuesday, September 22
Noon – 1:00 p.m.
124 Sparks Building
Lunch will be provided
“Enough Already! The Recent (and not so recent) Vicissitudes of Holocaust Memory”
Wednesday, September 23 at 6:00 p.m. Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library
Since at least 1945, two visions for memory have competed: one concerned that, as Nietzsche put it, too much attention to the past could be “the gravedigger of the present”; and one, following Santayana’s dictum, claiming that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. There have been both reasonable and unreasonable uses of these competing inclinations. Against a longer historical backdrop, this talk will address the precipitous fall in status of Holocaust remembrance since its apotheosis in the Stockholm Declaration of 2000. In particular, it will attempt to draw a line between justified identification of problems with Holocaust memory and the unjustified implication that Holocaust memory is itself the problem.
In partnership with our humanities colleagues in the Commonwealth Campuses, an initiative demonstrating the value of humanities education is ongoing. Humanities Works tells the stories of people who use the skills and knowledge of the humanities to face real-world challenges and to make better solutions. Read more at https://www.humanitiesworks.psu.edu/.
Welcome to 2026-2027 at the Humanities Institute!
A Note from our Director, John Christman:
This will be another exciting year for the Institute. We look forward to continuing our support of humanities faculty and students, both in their research and teaching. Our Faculty and Graduate Student Resident Fellows will be sharing their work throughout the year (see our listserv for dates), and we will be supporting a number of other events throughout the fall and spring. Stay informed by joining our listserv, following us on social media, or checking back here.
Acknowledgement of Land
The Pennsylvania State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations. As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.