Date
Sunday, March 2, 2014 at 7:30 p.m.
Location
Room H-763 Hall Building
1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Dr. Richard Menkis
Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
Already in the middle of the 1960s, mental health professionals turned their attention towards not just survivors but the descendants of the survivors. With the proliferation of memoirs and works of literature by the children and grandchildren of survivors, scholars of literature have developed new terms (e.g. “postmemory”) and have published widely in the area. One need only think of the attention that Art Spiegelman’s Maus has attracted.
However, the area of second generation studies has not received the same attention from historians. In this presentation, Menkis will offer a historian’s perspective on the issues in the study of the second generation. In the first part of the talk, he will emphasize the groups in the history of the second generation, with an emphasis on Canadian developments. In the second part of the talk, he will discuss issues relating to historical memory from the perspective of the individual within the groups. Menkis argues that we have to move beyond the stereotypes of traumatized generations to understand the variety of experiences of the children of survivors.