On Sept.11, terrorist attacks on symbolic architecture in New York and Washington, D.C., shook the world and America's long-cherished sense of safety, sending the country into a mixed state of shock, anxiety and retrospection. How are Americans responding to one of the darkest days in national history? How can the nation cope with such an unprecedented, staggering crisis?
These are questions Edward T. Linenthal, professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, seeks to answer. On Thursday, Nov. 15, Linenthal will discuss "From the Holocaust Museum to the Oklahoma City National Memorial: Engaging Violence on the American Landscape" at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Sponsored by the Center for Humanities and the Arts, the lecture will be held in the British Studies Room of Norlin Library at 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Before the lecture, Linenthal will do a book signing of "The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in America."
Regarded as one of the nation's most eloquent and incisive chroniclers of violence, death and contested memory, Linenthal will talk about events that have changed American lives forever, such as the Holocaust Museum, the Oklahoma City bombing, and, most recently, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He also will touch on the extraordinary bonds of affection and acts of compassion that linked people in the wake of a national crisis.
Linenthal began his career at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1979 where he has held two four-year endowed chairs and been named Distinguished Teacher. He has been a research fellow in both the Arms Control and Defense Policy Program at MIT and at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Linenthal is a frequent consultant to the National Park Service on the interpretation of historic sites.
Linenthal's previous publications include: "Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields," "Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum," and co-edited with Tom Engelhardt, "History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past."
The Nov. 15 lecture is part of the "Cultural Memory and Sites of Tradition" Series organized by CU's Center for Humanities and the Arts.
The center serves as a focus for humanistic scholarship and artistic creation across the Boulder campus.
Each year, the center selects a theme around which it organizes central activities: a year-long faculty and graduate student seminar, a lecture series and a spring colloquium. In addition, the center sponsors monthly "Work-in-Progress" sessions, funds interdisciplinary workshops, and co-funds a large number of events with other units on campus.