Professors from countries across the world, such as Germany and Belgium, will be on campus during the next few days to celebrate the memory of one man: Walter Benjamin.

Syracuse and Cornell universities will host a two-day conference titled “Memoryscapes and Imageworlds: Archive, Architecture and Media After Walter Benjamin” to explore the effect that Benjamin, a 20th-century German philosopher and social critic, had on society, according to an Oct. 23 SU News release.

The conference runs from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2 and is free and open to the public, according to the release.

“Walter Benjamin is the most prominent media theoretician of the 20th-century,” said Karl Solibakke, an associate professor of German at SU. “His contributions to society are the development of our understanding of modern media, and our understanding of what comprises cultures and makes them function or not function.”

Benjamin was a German-Jewish essayist who wrote about technology, language, literature, the arts and society. Many of his works have been published since the 1980s and have generated conversation, according to the release.

The SU Humanities Center in the College of Arts and Sciences organized the event, and the Central New York Humanities Corridor is sponsoring it. “Memoryscapes and Imageworlds” is a part of the 2012 Syracuse Symposium, “Memory-Media-Archive,” according to the release.

The conference will be presented in conjunction with “IMAGES? Precisely!,” a part of a transdisciplinary humanities project involving the SU Humanities Center and School of Architecture, according to the release.

Solibakke said the conference will focus specifically on archives, architecture, media, memory and images. He said it was Benjamin who developed an idea of what images and moving images are composed of and how they affect society.

SU and Cornell teamed up for the event because a group of people from the two universities came together to rally forces and look at these topics, which he feels are pertinent to the 21st century, Solibakke said.

The event has drawn guests from universities all over the world. Attendees include Vivian Liska from the University of Antwerp in Belgium and Bernd Witte from Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf in Germany, among others, according to the release.

Michael Jennings, president of the International Walter Benjamin Society, will also attend, Solibakke said.

The conference is especially important, Solibakke said, because one of Benjamin’s first published works came out in New York shortly after his death.

When Benjamin died, he said, Europe was ensconced in war, so it was difficult to publish anything there. But his followers in New York came together and mimeographed some of his works, which were then circulated through many intellectual groups within the state.

“It’s almost as if we are bringing Walter Benjamin home,” Solibakke said.

Solibakke said everyone should know who Benjamin is and what he represents, and urges students to attend the event.

Said Solibakke: “It doesn’t matter what discipline students are in, whether it’s the sciences, the humanities, the social sciences. Walter Benjamin is one of the gallant figures of culture, society, memory, archives.”

Published on October 31, 2012 at 12:43 am

Contact Jill: jccomole@syr.edu