An Absent Presence: The Curricular and Pedagogical Construction of Memory

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Pedagogical Encounters With Place, Memory, and Affect

Abstract

As a memorial and museum, the NS11MM in NYC holds the authority, responsibility, and charge to memorialize 9/11 and honor those who perished, thus securing their pedagogical burden of responsibility. In this paper presentation, we present the results of a research project that sought to explore the curricular and pedagogical workings of the museum and memorial as both produces particular forms of remembering. Through the interplay between the memorial and the museum, the public is to remember the event through objects, icons, imagery, and language and feel the trauma experienced both personally and collectively in the US and around the world. We attempt to better understand how spaces of memory impact both individual and collective cognitive and affective responses.

Authors

• Brenda M. Trofanenko, University of Illinois

• Avner Segall, Michigan State University