UCLA Center for East Asian Studies  

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"Confronting the Past: Memory, Identity, and Society "
A Comparative and Cross-Cultural Conference

January 4-5, 2001
Faculty Center, UCLA

Convened by Saul Friedlander and David N. Myers

This conference is being held on the 20th anniversary of the creation of the "1939" Club Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). It will explore how different nations and societies in the past half-century have attempted to confront and "come to terms" with their troubling pasts. Given the extraordinary violence that characterized the 20th century, many nations' pasts are marked by episodes of extreme criminality and/or trauma. We seek to explore the ways in which these pasts are remembered, avenged, and adjudicated in a comparative, cross-cultural context.

The paradigmatic act of extraordinary collective violence perpetrated in this century is the Holocaust. It has also become the model for legal, economic, and cultural responses to state-sponsored criminality. The conference will investigate various modes of "coming to terms" with the Holocaust, both by perpetrators and victims. And yet, a distinctive feature of this conference will be its wide-ranging, comparative perspective. Presenters will discuss the ways in which groups of victims and perpetrator's have attempted to examine their often entwined pasts in the cases of the Armenian genocide, South Africa, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and the United States. Distinguished scholars and journalists will engage in a wide-ranging, comparative conversation that extends over the central political events of the past half-century.

Sunday, February 4, 2001 
9:30 Panel I:  Morning Session 
Confronting the Past I: The Paradigmatic Case of the Holocaust
Moderator: Janet Hadda, University of California at Los Angeles

"Remembrance and Denial: The Armenian Genocide in Comparative Perspective"
Presenter: Richard Hovannisian, University of California at Los Angeles

"The Holocaust and the Emergence of International Human Rights" 
Presenter: Richard Falk, Princeton University

"Establishing Memory: The Holocaust in European Political Cultures"
Presenter: Dan Diner, Simon-Dubnow-Institute for Jewish History and Culture, Leipzig, Germany; and Ben-Gurion-University of the Negev, Israel

"Between Uniqueness and Universalization: The Holocaust as a Model for Reconciling Perpetrators and Victims" 
Presenter: Omer Bartov, Brown University

Commentator: Elazar Barkan, Claremont Graduate School

2:00 p.m. Panel II:  Afternoon Session 
Confronting the Past II: Legal Responses

Moderator: Miriam Silverberg, University of California at Los Angeles

"Restorative Justice at Times of Transition: South Africa, Sierra Leone and East Timor Compared" 
Presenter: Paul van Zyl, Transitional Justice Program, Human Rights Institute, Columbia Law School

"Rites of Collective Mourning, Commemoration, and Liability in Germany"
 Presenter: John Borneman, Cornell University/Princeton University

"Accountability and Catharsis: Instances from Latin America and the Balkans " Presenter: Lawrence Weschler, The New Yorker Magazine

Commentator: Jonathan Miller, Southwestern Law School

7:30 p.m. Panel III:  Evening Session 
Confronting the Past III: Culture and the Memorialization of Memory

Moderator: Debora Silverman, University of California at Los Angeles

"Exhibiting the Holocaust: The Impact of Place, Time, and Constituency on Museum Narratives" 
Presenter: Michael Berenbaum (The Berenbaum Group)

"Presenting Our Pasts: Native American Communities and Memories at National Museum of the American Indian" 
Presenter: Mary Jane Lenz, National Museum of the American Indian

"Recovering/Recovering From America's Concentration Camps" 
Presenter: Karen L. Ishizuka, Japanese American National Museum

Monday, February 5, 2001 
9:30 Panel IV: Morning Session 
Confronting the Past IV: Memory, Money, and the Politics of Reparations

Moderator: Ivan Berend, University of California at Los Angeles

"Reparations, Restitution, and Compensation in the Aftermath of National Socialism, 1945-2000"
Presenter: Gerald Feldman, University of California at Berkeley

"How to Overcome Impunity of Wartime Sexual Violence: The Meaning of Women's War Crimes Tribunal for Japan's Military Sexual Slavery" 
Presenter: Yayori Matsui, Asahi Shimbun

"Reparations for African Americans: Learning from the Jewish and Japanese-American Experiences" 
Presenter: Ricardo Rene Laremont, SUNY Binghamton

Commentator: Michael Bazyler, Whittier Law School

7:30 Performance  
Henry Greenspan (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) presents, "Remnants," his one-man play based on his interviews with Holocaust survivors. A question-and-answer session will follow.

The conference is open to the general public at no charge. Pre-registration is required. Please call the Center to make reservations. The Conference will take place in the Faculty Center. Henry Greenspan's performance will take place in the Fowler Museum's Auditorium. For more information, e-mail Alexandra Garbarini, conference coordinator, at agarbari@ucla.edu, or call UCLA's Center for Jewish Studies (310) 825-5387.

 

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