Dr. Bernard Armada to speak on ‘Memory’s Execution’ Oct. 20

Dr. Bernard Armada of UST’s Communication and Journalism Department will speak on “Memory’s Execution: (Dis)placing the Dissident Body” on Tuesday, Oct. 20.,

Dr. Bernard Armada

Dr. Bernard Armada

Hosted by the American Culture and Difference program in the College of Arts and Sciences, the event will be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Room 126 (auditorium), John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts. The talk is free and open to the public.

Armada will examine the communicative texture of public memory in the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM), formerly the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tenn., and the location of the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Armada’s presentation takes his audience to Memphis to consider how civil rights memory is reconstructed in light of the NCRM’s $11 million expansion, which was completed in 2002. By focusing specifically on the spatial and architectural modifications to the museum’s exterior and its surrounding environment, Armada argues that the new expansion privileges one version of civil rights memory while extinguishing another, leaving everyday tourists as the stakeholders most severely shortchanged. By focusing on the differences between the original museum and the expansion, he will clarify the complex relationship between remembering and forgetting.

For more information, contact the American Culture and Difference program, (651) 962-5649.