How we deal with memory when our physical surroundings are drastically altered? What does it mean to live amidst catastrophe and ruins? How to put difficult knowledge of catastrophe and loss on public display? How do we engage with representing pain and suffering? What to say, show and how? Who should look at?

Visit: https://moa.ubc.ca/exhibition/a-future-for-memory/
We will meet at 1 pm at the entrance of MOA. Bring your students cards.

Readings:
1. Zembylas, Michalinos. (2014). Theorizing “Difficult Knowledge” in the Aftermath of the “Affective Turn”: Implications for Curriculum and Pedagogy in Handling Traumatic Representations. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(3), 390.
2. Miles, James. “Scattered Memories of Difficult History and Museum Pedagogies of Disruption.” Journal of Museum Education, vol. 46, no. 2, 2021, pp. 272-281.
3. Yamauchi, Hiroyasu. 2021. “Why an Art Museum has a Permanent Exhibition on Earthquake and Tsunami Records.” In A Future for Memory: Art and Life after the Great East Japan Earthquake, F. Nakamura (ed.) Vancouver: The Museum of Anthropology. 9–14.

Recommended:
4. Hayashi, Isao. 2012. “Folk Performing Art in the Aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake.” Asian Anthropology, 11 (1):75–87.

The readings for this week weave a series of ideas and concrete situations to examine difficult knowledge as encountered in the work of representing disaster in museums or as encountered in the everyday work of teaching. Michalinos Zembylas, a professor of Educational Studies in Cyprus, will provide you with some of the genealogy of the concept of difficult knowledge in the educational context in which it emerges (by education theorist Deborah Britzman who first conceptualized Difficult Knowledge). Zembylas highlights affect and representation in curriculum pedagogy, questions that are similarly relevant to museums.