Cultural Trauma, Social Solidarity and Moral Responsibility: The Holocaust and other Mass Murders
Dr. Jeffery Alexander
Featuring Jeffery Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, 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 discusses 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.
[Bio]
Dr. Alexander's talk was held in the Escondido Theater located in the Student Union Building at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX on March 23, 2016.
The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization
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Address
Mailing Address: Box 42019 - The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, Lubbock, TX 79409-2019 -
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806.834.8289 -
Email
steve.balch@ttu.edu