Jay Winter - All the things we cannot hear: The edges of memory

Published: 7 Oct, 2021

in|discussion is presented in partnership between the Dublin School of Creative Arts at Technological University Dublin and the Irish Humanities Alliance.

Jay Winter

All the things we cannot hear:

The edges of memory

6.00 – 7.15 pm Wednesday 13th of October 2021

Online Public Lecture

“I want to try to contribute to the large and growing literature on the memory of the Great War by exploring a difficult problem.  How do we approach auditory memory?  To what extent do the sounds of the past, our own personal past, resonate with and inform our memories?  In Jewish ritual, the act of remembrance takes many forms, but one phrase dominates all:  truah zicharon, in the sound, lies the memory.  On one level, the sound referred to is the piercing call of the ram’s horn, the shofar, telling us to wake up and remember.  But there are so many other instances in which sound can evoke profound and powerful memories, that I want to suggest that the history of memory, including my own, is incomplete, without attention to the soundscape of the past.  Sound is at the edge of memory.  I want to explore the implications of this truth for those like me who try to understand the cultural history of the Great War.”-

Jay Winter

Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of History emeritus at Yale University.  He taught for many years at the University of Cambridge before coming to Yale in 2001.  He is an historian of the First World War, author of Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European cultural history (1995) and editor of The Cambridge History of the First World War (2014).  He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Graz, the Katholic University of Leuven, and the University of Paris – VIII.  In 2017 he received the Victor Adler Prize of the Austrian government for a lifetime’s work in history.

All are welcome to this free Zoom event; places must be booked on:

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/all-the-things-we-cannot-hear-the-edges-of-memory-tickets-184931484047

 in|discussion is a public lecture series and a forum to discuss contemporary issues and current research in art, design, visual and material culture, critical theory, pedagogy, philosophy, society and technology. in|discussion is generated by research and practice currently taking place in the Dublin School of Creative Arts at Technological University Dublin.

Further talks for 2021-22 include:

Dr Stacy Boldrick, Contesting Monuments: Iconoclasm, Protest and Long History, Wednesday 6.00 pm 11th of November 2021.

in|discussion is presented in partnership between the Dublin School of Creative Arts at Technological University Dublin and the Irish Humanities Alliance.