“No Cameras, No Questions!” School Photos in Haunted Concentrationary Sites
A public lecture by Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University) and Leo Spitzer (Dartmouth College)
Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research
Cosponsored by the Center for Visual Anthropology at USC, the USC Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.
Presenting their recently published book School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer will discuss the role of school photography in three historical instances of incarceration of persecuted populations: photos taken at government controlled boarding schools into which Native American children were forcibly removed in the U.S. starting in the 1870s; photos taken, often surreptitiously, in school classes held in Nazi ghettos during the Second World War; and school photos made in concentration camps for Japanese Americans in the United States during the same period in the early 1940s. What do school photos do at such moments of crisis and transformation and what light do they shed on recent instances of child removal at the US Southern borders?
Lunch will be served.
Please RSVP to cagr@usc.edu.
