Difficult Pasts: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Telling Difficult Histories

This international symposium explores the ethical and practical challenges of effectively communicating traumatic pasts to public audiences. It brings together leading scholars and practitioners from Europe and North America to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to interrogate the challenges facing historians, artists and museum professionals as they seek to address difficult or traumatic pasts in various contexts.

The theme of the program is the ethics and aesthetics of the study and communication of difficult pasts. Specifically, how can these stories be related accurately, sensitively, and ethically; are there methodologies or styles of writing and art that are particularly appropriate when it comes to responding to atrocity; and how do we support archivists, curators, researchers, and artists who engage in sharing and documenting traumatic pasts?

The conference is organized in collaboration with the UCLA Library Modern Endangered Archives Program, the University of Virginia’s Jewish Studies Program, the Centre of Archaeology, University of Huddersfield and the Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan.

Info: Participants include:Robert M. Ehrenreich (US Holocaust Memorial Museum); Temi Odumosu (University of Washington);
Alexandra Drakakis (9/11 Memorial Museum); Paula Kolar (Holocaust Centre North); Jennifer Geddes (University of Virginia); Jason Young (Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan); Azir Osmanović (Srebrenica Memorial Center, Potočari); Tatiana Vagramenko (Barcelona Supercomputing Center); Anne Gilliland (UCLA); Caroline Sturdy Colls (University of Huddersfield); Rebecca Jinks (Royal Holloway);
Jennie Williams (Kinfolkology); Christine Schmidt (Wiener Holocaust Library)

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Host or Publisher Centre for Public History, Queen's University Belfast