Please join us for the next Krasnow Monday Seminar on 10/1/12--
sponsored jointly with the College of Humanities and Social
Sciences.
Refreshments will be served at 3:30pm. Come chat with colleagues
and like-minded researchers and students prior to the talk at 4pm.
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TITLE:
High Fidelity? The Sciences of Autobiographical Memory in Postwar
America
SPEAKER:
Alison Winter
Associate Professor of History
University of Chicago
DATE: Monday, October 1, 2012
TIME: 4:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Lecture Room (Room 229)
Krasnow Institute Building
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
ABSTRACT:
This lecture examines the history of scientific representations of
autobiographical memory – how we remember our own personal past. The
period it examines spans the 1940s-1980s, when sharply conflicting
representations of memory came into vogue, one claiming that
everything we experience is perfectly “recorded” in our brains, and
the other claiming that our minds continually alter and
“reconstruct” the past for use in the present. These conflicting
representations set the stage for an all-out “memory war” in the
1980s-90s, focused on claims of repressed (and recently recovered)
memories of childhood sexual abuse. The paper ends by considering
the history of this war, and the current state of the sciences and
beliefs about autobiographical memory.
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For additional directions or information call 703-993-4333 or browse
to
http://krasnow.gmu.edu/location/ .
The full semester seminar schedule is at
http://krasnow.gmu.edu/blog/category/monday-seminars/upcomingmondayseminars/
.