Keynote: James E. Young

Utøya and Norway’s July 22nd Memorial Process: The Memory of Terror

James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has taught since 1988.  He has also taught at New York University as a Dorot Professor of English and Hebrew/Judaic Studies (1984-88), at Bryn Mawr College in the History of Religion, and at the University of Washington, Harvard University, and Princeton University as a visiting professor.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of California in 1983.  His research and teaching areas include narrative theory, cultural memory studies, Holocaust studies, and visual culture.

In his keynote slide-discussion, Professor Young will reflect on Norway’s and Labor Youth’s memorial process, especially on the issue of how and what to preserve on the island of Utoya, including the Café Building and the families’ vernacular shrines around the island.

Publications include:  Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (1988), The Texture of Memory (1993), Ed. The Art of Memory (1994),  At Memory’s Edge (2000), and The Stages of Memory (forthcoming, 2015).  Professor Young served on the juries of  the design competitions for both Berlin’s Denkmal for the Murdered Jews of Europe and for the National September 11 Memorial in New York City and has been consulting closely with the July 22^nd Memorial Research Project, directed by Tor Einar Fagerland.