WHEN: Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 6:00 - 7:30 pm
WHERE: Maison Française, Columbia University
Co-sponsored by Columbia Maison Française and Columbia Center for Oral History Research.
Christian Delage talks about a research program he led with the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Present (IHTP) that involved filming the testimonies of the women and men who lived through the terrorist attacks in Paris and St. Denis on November 13, 2015, in which 130 people were killed. The aim was to capture a broad picture of the memory of what happened that night, by interviewing not only survivors of the attacks but the whole chain of people involved: police officers, fire-fighters, doctors, restaurant and bar owners. To provide a comparative perspective on how oral histories can serve to capture the personal memories of victims in the immediate aftermath of such events, Mary Marshall Clark talks about the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project she co-directed with Peter Bearman, analyzing the role September 11 played in New Yorkers' lives and how these New York stories differ from what 9/11 has come to mean in the national media.
The event will include a screening of a short editing of one of the testimonies on November 13, in French with subtitles in English.
Christian Delage is Professor at the University of Paris 8, and Director of the Institut d’Histoire du temps present. His last book, Caught on Camera : Film in the Courtroom from the Nuremberg Trials to the Trials of the Khmer Rouge, has been published in 2013 at UPenn Press. His last research focuses on the role of video as evidence in the Rodney King case.
Mary Marshall Clark is the Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research located in INCITE, and co-founder and director of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts degree program. Formerly, she was an oral historian and filmmaker at the New York Times.