The Act of Remembering: A&S Scholars to Examine American History at 250 During Symposium Event

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences 

Understanding history – by answering questions in the present about what gets remembered or what does not – is a reminder that memory itself is an ongoing action; not simply a stagnant reflection of the past.   

Through this lens, a group of interdisciplinary professors from the College of Arts & Sciences will gather for a symposium hosted by the Liberal Studies Visiting Scholars Project entitled, “History, Memory, and America at 250,” on Wednesday, Sept. 23.  

The free, public event kicks off at 1:15 p.m. in Shumaker Research Building Room 139 with a welcome from Dean Dayna Touron and opening remarks from Frank Kelderman, the Director of the Individualized Major and the Liberal Studies Visiting Scholars Project.   

"People have begun to talk much more about remembering rather than memory to acknowledge the ways that remembering is a very creative act, a very active thing. And when we think about remembering, we're often tying together very personal history, family history, community history, and the histories of cultural groups or minorities, as well as national histories. This symposium is an opportunity to think about what that active remembering means to us today,” Kelderman said. 

The timing of the symposium is intentional – allowing for critical thought and discussions to also take place about how this moment in history was celebrated by America over the summer.  

“I think one reason why this is important is that in the time of AI, these things will start remembering for us. If AI engines are building narratives based on what can be quickly mined from online content, I think it's more and more imperative to think of history as needing these active acts of remembering that are based in personal family and community histories as well,” Kelderman said. “The symposium will urge us to think about which stories and which materials we build those memories around and what type of community engagement helps us do that.”  

The symposium’s first roundtable, “The Years In-between: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on American History,” begins at 1:30 p.m. Faculty from History, English, Pan-African Studies and Women and Gender Studies, Political Science, and the Hite Institute of Art + Design will each examine a particular year in U.S. history that is significant within their field but may receive less attention in broader historical narratives or public memory. History Department Chair Chris Ehrick will moderate the discussion.   

At 2:45 p.m., “The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting” will feature the 2026–27 Bingham Faculty Fellows. Drawing on research, creative work and teaching across disciplines, participants will explore critical memory studies and consider what it means to engage questions of remembering and forgetting within the current political moment. Mary P. Sheridan, Director of the Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society, will moderate.   

“The two panels that precede the keynote will show something really meaningful about interdisciplinary scholarship,” Kelderman said. “Scholarship really advances when folks who aren’t usually talking to one another about certain issues begin having shared conversations. I think the value of this approach is that it allows us to understand American history by looking at conversations that might not necessarily be speaking to one another yet. One panel, ‘The Years In-between,’ is about how the periodization of American history might look different depending on which subfield or discipline you’re in. I think a lot of our memory around American history is still very much based on the years that are really legible.”  

The approach of this panel allows them to explore particular years or particular periods that are essential to understanding a particular history or a particular community's memory of American history, but might be overlooked in the general historiography, in the general kind of narrative of American history.  

"The broader conversation across the disciplines can reveal stories or tensions, perhaps, and perspectives that might remain simply invisible when history is viewed through a single academic lens,” Janna Tajibaeva, department coordinator for the Individualized Major and Liberal Studies Visiting Scholars Project, said. “History is always evolving. It's not a static thing. We interpret differently. We see it differently. So that's the beauty of it. And we also just simply get to showcase our own talented faculty because we have so many great experts.”  

The symposium concludes at 4 p.m. with a keynote by Tracy Campbell of the University of Kentucky, “A Great Democracy in Action.” Campbell, a historian specializing in 20th-century U.S. political and social history, will draw from his upcoming book to examine American democracy in the late 1940s. Campbell is the author of five books, including The Year of Peril: America in 1942, which received the 2021 Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize from the New York Historical Society.  

“I hope students will be inspired to see faculty being part of that process of actively shaping history through teaching, through research, and through community engagement,” Kelderman said. “And also, I just hope that students and members of the community will learn some really neat things that they didn't know yet.”