Building Transdisciplinary Relationships through Multidirectional Memory Work and Education

Thorson, Helga (2019). Building transdisciplinary relationships through multidirectional memory work and education. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies (Toronto), 55(4): 342-359. (with Dawn Smith)

Offering a blended form of collaborative and personal reflections, Dawn Smith and Helga Thorson discuss how their lives intersected through the I-witness Field School, a course on Holocaust memorialization offered by the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. Contemplating what is remembered and what is forgotten not only in the context of collective and cultural memory but also through the realm of education, the authors of this article draw on Michael Rothberg’s notion of multidirectional memory and Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory to advocate for a multidirectional and intergenerational education that leads to social change.