PHIL Colloquium Series - Sara Aronowitz
Title: Abstraction in History and Memory: The case of allegory, Abstract: Over time, our memory systems sort information, restructuring and filtering in order to preserve what we need to know. But what is it that we aim to learn from the past through memory? I'll present an overview and a chapter from a book in progress that looks at memory through an analogy with history. I analyze histories with different aims: to identify big patterns across human affairs, to build a narrative of our own national past, or to reconstruct in detail a few concrete events in order to understand why they happened. These aims of compiling history map on to different aims of memory systems. Do our memories function to capture narratives, uncover general principles, or keep hold of concrete details of singular events? Could a system serve more than one of these functions? For this talk, I'll focus on allegory in history and memory, through Ryszard Kapu¶ciński's The Emperor.
Event Categories: Lectures. Campus Locations: Tanner Irish Humanities Building - Carolyn (CTIHB). Contact Name: Connie Corbett. Contact Phone: 801-581-8162. Contact Email: c.corbett@utah.edu. Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Friday, April 17, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Memorial Day
University Observed Holidays
Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Monday, May 25, 2026.
Juneteenth
University Observed Holidays
Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Monday, June 15, 2026.
Independence Day
University Observed Holidays
Campus Wide Event: Yes.
Friday, July 3, 2026.