Professors to examine cultural memory

Professors to examine cultural memory

BY DANA BENSON
Rice News Staff

Rice’s
Center for the Study of Cultures will commence its visiting
professorship program with two distinguished German scholars
whose area of interest is cultural memory.

Jan Assmann,
an Egyptologist at the University of Heidelberg, and Aleida
Assmann, a professor of English and comparative literature
at the University of Konstanz, will spend nearly a month
on campus Oct. 1-22 through the Center for the Study of
Cultures Distinguished Visiting Professorship Program.

They are the
inaugural visiting professors through the program sponsored
by a National Endowment for the Humanities matching grant.
The husband-and-wife team each will deliver a public lecture,
and they will jointly conduct a seminar for faculty, graduate
students and students with related majors. The public lectures
are scheduled for Oct. 3 and 11.

While both Assmanns
have significant expertise in their respective fields, they
also have made notable contributions toward the development
of the concept of cultural memory, said Werner Kelber, director
of the Center for the Study of Cultures and the Isla Carroll
and Percy E. Turner Professor of Religious Studies.

Cultural memory,
or how people collectively remember the past, is as important
as actual historical events, Kelber noted.

“In the
simplest terms, cultural memory implies that we possess
history as we remember it—selectively, as members of
a group and impelled by the desire to appropriate the past
in order to solidify present identity,” he said.

Cultural memory
is a topic that resonates throughout the humanities and
social sciences, Kelber said. A classic example of cultural
memory is how people remember the Holocaust. While those
who experienced it remember it one way, outsiders remember
it another, and each group assigns different meaning to
it.

“The Assmanns
are very eminent persons to have as the inaugural visiting
professors at the Center of the Study of Cultures,” Kelber said.

Jan Assmann
will deliver his public lecture, “Monotheism and Memory:
Freud’s Moses and the Biblical Tradition,” Oct.
3 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Farnsworth Pavilion of the
Ley Student Center. A reception will follow.

Aleida Assmann
will speak on “Affect–Symbol–Trauma: Stabilizers
of Memory” Oct. 11 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in Farnsworth
Pavilion with a reception following.

Their joint
seminar, “Cultural Memory: Representing the Past and
Reconstructing Identity,” will be held Oct. 4, 10,
12 and 17 from 7 to 9 p.m. The first three sessions of the
seminar will be held in the humanities building, room 226,
and the final seminar will be in Sewall Hall, room 352A.

An abstract
from the seminar reads, “Not only within individuals,
but also within cultures, memories are used to construct
identities, legitimize institutions and orient action and
behavior. An attempt will be made to clarify and elaborate
the concept of cultural memory as an important research
instrument for cultural studies.”

The seminar
topics, with subtopics in parentheses, include “From
Short-term to Long-term Memories” (“Three Forms
of Memory,” “Maurice Halbwachs’ and Friedrich
Nietzsche’s Concepts of Collective Memory”), “Paradigms
of Learning” (“Writing and Ruling in Ancient Egypt,”
“The Paternal Book-Case”), “Reinventing Tradition”
(“The Egyptian Mysteries,” “Wordsworth, Schiller
and the Concept of Nature”) and “History and Memory”
(“History, Memory and International Law in the Ancient
Near East,” “History, Memory and the Holocaust”).

Jan Assmann
has received numerous scholarly honors, including the highest
honor from the Society of German Historians. His recent
books include “Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt
in Western Monotheism,” “Wisdom and Mystery: The
Image of the Greeks about Egypt” and “Death as
a Topic of Cultural Theory.”

Aleida Assmann
has written numerous books, including one of her most important
works, “Memory Spaces: Forms and Transformations of
Cultural Memory.” She will serve as a visiting professor
of English at Princeton University in the spring of 2001.

The Center for
the Study of Cultures exists to promote the study of cultures
across time and around the world, both as unique examples
of human behavior and creativity and as interconnected phenomena
that can illuminate one another.