Texas Tech University

Interview with Dr. Jeffrey Alexander

Featuring Dr. Jeffrey Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

Cultural Trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. This lecture will show how a new theoretical model of cultural trauma allows us to understand how the Holocaust provided a new model of moral responsibility that influenced subsequent societal understandings of social suffering from colonialism to racism in the United States. Dr. Alexander explores how cultural trauma established a new global framework within which contemporary struggles over memories of mass murders in China, Korea, Russia, and Japan are increasingly understood.

Dr. Alexander's talk took place at the Media and Communications Building, Room 281 Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX.