Virtual Exhibits
Oral History from the Mississippi Delta
Students in Dr. Auslander and Dr. Cunningham's course, "Memory and Cultural Production in
the Mississippi Delta" have produced an on line exhibition of their oral history and
archival research on the African-American culture and history in the Mississippi Delta.
Particular emphasis is given to the New World district of Clarksdale and the Baptist Town
neighborhood of Greenwood.
Refugee Art from the Southern Sudan
Students in Dr. Auslander's course, "Museums and Public Memory" (Anth 159a) have developed an on line exhibition of paintings by displaced Southern Sudanese residing in Kakuma Refugee Camp. These remarkable art works, documenting histories of genocide as well as extraordinary cultural resilience, are being preserved in the Department of Anthropology, within the new Southern Sudan Cultural Documentation Center.
You can also learn more about Southern Sudan from: Millsaps College Faith and Work Initiative: Sudan Initiative
Download "Aesthetics and Memory in South Sudanese Painting" a video created by Rose Beatriz Stimson, an MA student in Anthropology who helped in developing both the online and offline exhibitions.
Photography and Memorialization: Washington, DC
by Ellen Schattschneider, Department of Anthropology
In his classic 1936 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Walter Benjamin suggests that in some instances, the older cult value of the image is retained in photographs of the dead. Memorial practices the world over have deployed photographic images and photographic practices in a great variety of ways. As a cultural anthropologist, I have worked extensively on photographic memorials to fallen soldiers in present day Japan. I have recently become fascinated by examples of photographic memorials in the United States. Consider four examples from military memorials that I visited in the environs of Washington D.C., in November 2005.
In Memory's Grove: Commemorative Art by Kevin Sipp and Keith Morris Washington
Photos of Kevin Sipp and Keith M. Washington Exhibit
Dreitzer Gallery, Spingold Theater Complex, Brandeis University
September 15 - September 30, 2005; extended through October 7, 2005
Mounted as part of the conference, "Telling the Story: Power and Responsibility in Documenting Human Rights Abuses" at Brandeis University, September 15-16, 2005.