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Karen E. Till

Associate Member

Karen E. Till is Associate Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs and Director of Space&Place Collaborative at Virginia Tech University (USA). She is national councilor for the Association of American Geographers, international advisory board member for the Urban Laboratory at University College London, and research fellow at the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Karen's geo-ethnographic research explores the interrelationships among place-making, personal and social memory, public and community art, and creative and political practice in cities and societies in transition. She explores how places are experienced as thresholds of time-space in different societies, functioning as fluid mosaics of memory, metaphor and matter that create and mediate social spaces and temporalities. Places are haunted by past structures of meaning and human imprints; they may evoke or encrypt transgenerational phantoms in unexpected ways.

Her creative practice includes studios and memory methodology workshops with community leaders, residents, artists, and students, including in: London (Arts Lab Initiative with community leaders in Vauxhall and students from Royal Holloway University of London (2005)); Calgary (Salvation Army Homeless Shelter, residents, social workers, and architecture students in the Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Canada (2008)); Cape Town (District Six Museum, community leaders in the Cape Flats, community leaders in city organizations (2005-2006)); and Roanoke (Gainsboro and Hurt Park Neighborhood Association community leaders and residents; Roanoke Oral History Project; Roanoke Planners; and VT students (2009-ongoing)). She is also convening a larger set of related exhibitions, workshops, excursions, lectures on the theme of "Mapping Spectral Traces" as part of the Virginia Tech Humanities Symposium, and in coordination with Land2 and the University of Minnesota Department of Art (October 12-16, 2010).

Her publications include: The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); the co-edited volumes Textures of Place: Rethinking Humanist Geographies, with Paul Adams and Steven Hoelscher (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), and Walls, Borders, and Boundaries: Strategies of Surveillance and Survival, with Marc Silberman and Janet Ward (Berghahn Press, forthcoming); and numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Memory Studies, Social and Cultural Geography, Ecumene/cultural geographies, and History Workshop Journal. She is currently working on two book-length projects, Interim Spaces (about artistic and creative neighborhood practices in seemingly abandoned urban spaces, with a particular focus on Berlin) and Wounded Cities (a comparative international ethnographic project, with a focus on Berlin, Cape Town, Bogotá, Minneapolis, and Roanoke).

Karen E. Till

e-mail: ktill@vt.edu

Education

  • 1982-4, 86
    • B.A. (Hons), University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Geography, Special Track: Analysis and Conservation of Ecosystems. Magna Cum Laude Honors and Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society graduate.
  • 1985-86
    • Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Environmental Geography and Art History; University of California Education Abroad Program.
  • 1991
    • M.A. University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Geography. Thesis: Expert Conceptions of Place and Community: The Planner's Vision of Rancho Santa Margarita. Supervisor: Michael Curry.
  • 1996
    • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Geography. Dissertation: Place and the Politics of Memory: A Geo-ethnography of Museums and Memorials in Berlin. Supervisor: Yi-Fu Tuan

Academic Appointments/Professional History

  • 2008
    • Associate Professor (tenured), Urban Affairs and Planning; Government and International Affairs, SPIA, Virginia Tech Polytechnic and State University.
  • 2004 - 05
    • Senior Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London.
  • 1998 - 08
    • Assistant/Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota (tenure received in 2004).
  • 1996 - 98
    • Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University.

Other Appointments and Affiliations : Scholarly Institutions

  • 2008
    • Associate Member, LAND2 (U.K. artist-scholar network), University of West England Bristol and University of Leeds.
    • International Advisory Board, Urban Laboratory, University College London.
    • Affiliate Faculty, ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Critical Thought), Virginia Tech, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.
  • 2006
    • Honorary Research Associate, Royal Holloway, University of London.
  • 2008 - 09
    • International Advisory Board, Spandau Citadel Historic Museum (Zitadelle Spandau), Berlin, Germany.
  • 2008
    • Scholar in Residence, Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Canada.
  • 1998 - 08
    • Affiliate Faculty, Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota.
  • 2005 - 06
    • International Advisory Board: International Documentation Center of the History of National Socialist Forced Labor; Berlin Senate for Cultural Affairs and Research; International Documentation Center Topography of Terror, Berlin, Germany.
  • 1998 - 04
    • Affiliate Faculty, Center for Advanced Feminist Studies, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota.
  • 1999
    • Lecturer and Academic Consultant, Historic Preservation Program, Georgia State University, Field Seminar in Berlin, Germany.
  • 1996 - 98
    • Affiliate Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies, Louisiana State University.
  • 1996
    • Visiting Lecturer, Department of Geography, Colgate University, New York.
  • 1995
    • Visiting Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Professional bodies Membership

  • Alexander von Humboldt Association of America; American Planning Association; Association of American Geographers;
  • Association of American University Women; German Studies Association; Institute of British Geographers.

Awards and Honors

  • 2008
    • Gillmor Visiting Professor in Architecture, University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design.
    • Nominated for the university-wide Virginia Tech XCaliber Award by the School of Public and International Affairs for significant and innovative contributions in integrating technology in teaching and service-learning for undergraduate course on 'Urbanization and Development' (UAP 2014).
  • 2007
    • Supporting Women in Geography, Best Advisor Award, University of Minnesota, Department of Geography.
  • 1998
    • Warren J. Nystrom Dissertation Award, Association of American Geographers.
    • LSU Alpha Lambda Delta Freshman Honor Society Teaching Award.
  • 1991
    • Distinguished Teaching Fellow, College of Letters & Sciences, UW-Madison.
  • 1986
    • Phi-Beta Kappa, University of California, Los Angeles.
    • Award for Academic Excellence, Department of Geography, UCLA.
  • 1985-86
    • University of California Education Abroad Scholarship, Melbourne, Australia.

Publications - Books

  • 2005
    • Till, K.E. (second printing 2006) The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) pp. 296.

Edited Books

  • 2010
    • Silberman, M., Till, K.E., and Ward, J. (eds.) forthcoming Walls, Borders, Boundaries: Strategies of Surveillance and Survival (Oxford and New York: Berghan Press). Advance contract and anticipated final volume delivery to publishers in August 2010.
  • 2001
    • Adams, P., Hoelscher, S. and Till, K.E. (eds.) Textures of Place: Rethinking Humanist Geographies, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) pp. 461.

Guest edited special journal issues

  • 2007
    • 'Exploring Transnational Feminist Practice: Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race,' Review Forum Guest editor with Karen Morin, Gender, Place, and Culture 14 (6): 745-763.
  • 2001
    • 'The New Urbanism and Neotraditional Town Planning,' with Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Urban Geography 23 (3)

Articles in refereed journals

  • 2010
    • Till, K.E. ‘Greening’ the City? Artistic Re-Visions of Sustainability in Bogotá,’ e-misférica 7 (1), in press.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Urban Remnants: Place, memory, and artistic practice in Berlin and Bogotá’ ENCOUNTERS 1 (March): 75-88, 101-103; launch issue on “Beyond Tourism”
  • 2009
    • Jonker, J. and Till, K.E. ‘Mapping and Excavating Spectral Traces in postapartheid Cape Town’ Memory Studies 2 (3): 1-31.
  • 2008
    • Till, K.E. ‘Artistic and Activist Memory-Work: Approaching Place-Based Practice’ Memory Studies 1 (1): 95-109.
  • 2007
    • Morin, K. and Till, K.E. ‘Exploring Transnational Feminist Practice: Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race’ Gender, Place, and Culture 14 (6) (2007): 745-746
  • 2006
    • Till, K.E. ‘Memory Studies’ History Workshop Journal 62: 325-341.
  • 2004
    • Forest, B., Johnson, J. and Till, K.E. ‘Post-Totalitarian Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia’ Social and Cultural Geography 5(3): 357-380.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Emplacing Memory through the City: The New Berlin’ German Historical Institute Bulletin 35 (Fall): 73-83.
  • 2001
    • Falconer-Al Hindi, K. and Till, K.E. ‘(Re)Placing the New Urbanism Debates: Towards an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda’ Urban Geography 23 (3): 189-201.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Fragments, Ruins, Artifacts, Torsos’ Historical Geography 29 (2001): 70-73.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Returning home and to the field’ Geographical Review 91 (1-2) (2001): 46-56
    • Till, K.E. ‘New Urbanism and Nature: Green Marketing and the Neotraditional Community’ Urban Geography 22 (3): 220-248.
  • 1999
    • Till, K.E. ‘Staging the Past: Landscape Designs, Cultural Identity, and Erinnerungspolitik at Berlin’s Neue Wache’ Ecumene 6 (3): 251-283.
  • 1993
    • Till, K.E. ‘Neotraditional towns and urban villages: The cultural production of a geography of “otherness”’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11: 709-732.

Book chapters

  • forthcoming
    • Till, K.E. ‘Resilient Politics and a Place-Based Ethics of Care: Rethinking the city through the District Six in Cape Town, South Africa’ in Bruce Goldstein & Will Butler, (eds.) Planning for the Unthinkable: Building Resilience to Catastrophic Events (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
    • Silberman, M., Till, K.E. and Ward, J. ‘New Territories: Writing Across the Lines: An Introduction’ in Silberman, Till, Ward (eds.) Walls, Borders, and Boundaries: Strategies of Surveillance and Survival (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Press).
  • in press
    • Till, K.E. ‘Interim Use at a Former Death Strip? Art, Politics and Urbanism at Skulpturenpark Berlin’ in Marc Silberman (ed.) After the Wall: Berlin in Germany and Europe (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan)
  • 2009
    • Till, K.E. ‘Ethnography’ in Rob Kitchin & Nigel Thrift (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography Vol. 3 (Oxford: Elsevier) pp. 626-631.
    • Watson, A. and Till, K.E. ‘Ethnography and Participant Observation’ in Stuart Aitken, Dydia DeLyser, Steve Herbert, Mike Crang & Linda McDowell (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Geography (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) pp. 255-294.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Re/Staging the City: Artistic Urban Encounters’ in Thea Brejzik, Wolfgang Greisenegger & Lawrence Wallen (eds.) Space and Truth/Raum und Wahrheit: Monitoring Scenography 2, (Zurich: Zurich University of the Arts/Züricher Hochscule der Künste (ZHdK)) pp. 114-125.
    • Till, K.E. and Jonker, J. ‘Spectral Ground in New Cities: Memorial Cartographies of Cape Town and Berlin’ in Uta Staiger, Henriette Steiner & Andrew Webber (eds.) Memory Culture and the Contemporary City: Building Sites (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan) pp. 85-105.
  • 2008
    • Till, K.E. ‘Unresolved Remainders: Memory, photography and place in Judith Tucker’s 'Tense’ in the exhibition catalogue for Tense: Judith Tucker (Leeds: Wild Pansy Press) pp. 28-31
    • Till, K.E. ‘Mapping Traces: Touring Munich with Stih+Schnock/Kartierung der Spuren: Eine Stadtreise durch Munich mit Stih+Schnock’ in Renata Stih & Frieder Schnock (eds.) Zeige Deine Sammlung: Jüdische Spuren in München/Show Your Collection: Jewish Traces in Munich (Nuremberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst) pp. 16-25.
  • 2004
    • Till, K.E. ‘Political Landscapes’ in Nuala Johnson, Rich Schein 7 James Duncan (eds.) Companion to Cultural Geography (Oxford: Blackwell) pp. 347-364.
  • 2003
    • Till, K.E. ‘Construction Sites and Showcases: Tourism, Maps, and Spatial Practices of the New Berlin’ in Stephen Hanna & Vincent Del Casino Jr. (eds.) Mapping Tourism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) pp. 51-78.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Places of Memory’ in John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell & Gearoid O’ Tuathail (eds.) A Companion to Political Geography (Oxford: Blackwell) pp. 289-301.
  • 2001
    • Till, K.E. ‘Re-Imagining National Identity: “Chapters of Life” at the German Historical Museum in Berlin’ in Paul Adams, Steven Hoelscher & Karen E. Till (eds.) Textures of Place: Rethinking Humanist Geographies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota) pp.273-299.
    • Adams, P., Hoelscher, S. and Till, K.E. ‘Place in Context: Rethinking Humanist Geographies’ in Paul Adams, Steven Hoelscher & Karen E. Till (eds.) Textures of Place, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) pp. xiii-xxxiii.
  • 2000
    • Till, K.E. ‘Verortung des Museums: Ein geo-ethnographischer Ansatz zum Verständnis der sozialen Erinnerung’ (Placing Museums: A geo-ethnographic approach to social memory) in Rosmarie Beier (ed.) Geschichtskultur in der zweiten Moderne: Vom Präsentieren des Vergangenen (Historical Culture in the Second Modern Age) (Berlin: Campus) pp. 183-206.
    • Till, K.E. ‘Vision, visual, visuality’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
  • 1998
    • Till, K.E. ‘Text, textual, textuality, intertextuality’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
    • Till, K.E. ‘Landscape’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
    • Till, K.E. ‘Gaze’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
    • Till, K.E. ‘Feminist anthropology’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
    • Till, K.E. ‘Author, death of’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
    • Till, K.E. ‘Authentic, authenticity’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).
    • Till, K.E. ‘Anthropology’ in Joanne Sharp & Linda McDowell (eds.) A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London: Arnold).

Other publications: Art Exhibition/Creative Work

  • 2006
    • Till, K.E. Wall Etchings photograph/postcard and artistic statement in Iain Biggs & Sarah Blowen (curators) Borderland Postcards: Wish you were here? (Derry, U.K.: SIEF Congress ‘Transcending “European Heritages”: Liberating the Ethnological Imagination).

Book Reviews

  • 2010
    • Williams, Paul, 2007, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities in cultural geographies
  • 1998
    • Foote, Ken, 1997, Shadowed Ground: America’s landscapes of violence and tragedy, in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(3) : 523-525.
  • 1997
    • Hayden, Dolores, 1995, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, in Historical Geography 25 : 189-191.
  • 1996
    • Lowenthal, David, 1996, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, in Geographical Review 87 (4) : 557-559.
    • Renneberg, Monika & Walker, Mark, eds., 1994, Science, Technology and National Socialism (Cambridge University Press) in Journal of Historical Geography 22 : 103-105.

Media

  • 2009
    • Interview for: Macarena Garcia, “RECORRIDO: El doloroso pasado de la ciudad traducido en seis museos: Berlín: la ruta por una historia violenta,” El Mercurio (22 November 2009, Santiago, Chile)

Invited Keynotes and Public Lectures

  • 2010
    • Plenary: Finding Space: Artful Explorations of the Interim for: “Making Space: Creating Good Cities?” conference, Vancouver Art Gallery, March 26-27, 2010, Vancouver, Canada.
  • 2009
    • Keynote: Memory-Work in Interim Spaces: Place-based artistic practices in Berlin and Bogotá for: “Beyond Tourism: Performing Memory, Place, and Identity,” 21st International Forum, Dokkyo University, Inaugural Event for the Department of Tourism and Transnational Studies, Japan, November 13-15, 2009.
    • Invited Lecture: Interim Space at Skulpturenpark Berlin: Art, Politics, and Urbanism at a Former Death Strip, for “The Wall Came Down: Interdisciplinary and International Symposium,” Department of German Studies, 5-7 November 2009, University of Wisconsin.
    • Invited Lecture: “Interim Spaces as Living Repositories of Memory and Forgetting,” for Landscape and Memory international interdisciplinary workshop, Urban Laboratory, University of College London, May 2009.
    • Plenary: The Creative Potential of Space and Place: Artistic memory-work in Berlin and Cape Town, for Department of German Conference: Conceptualizing Space and Place in the Literature, Language, Culture and Film of the German-speaking world, Georgetown University, April 2009.
    • Keynote: Performing Place, Mapping Remnants: Inhabiting Wounded Cities, for World Performance Project International Symposium: “Mapping Memory: Performance, Witnessing and Place,” Yale University, March 2009.
    • Invited Lecture: Towards a memorial cartography of Cape Town, University of Kentucky Department of Geography lecture series, February 2009.
  • 2008
    • Plenary: Wounded Cities, Douglas Gillmor Memorial Lecture sponsored by the City of Calgary and Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary, Canada, October 2008.
    • Invited Lecture: Creative Urban Emplacements: ReMapping the City, for Monitoring Scenography 2: Space and Truth international symposium, Zurich University of the Arts, October 2008.
  • 2007
    • Invited Lecture: 'Spectral Ground in New Cities: Mapping memorial cartographies in Berlin and Cape Town, for InEvidence: Witnessing Cities and the Case of Berlin, international and interdisciplinary symposium, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Cambridge, U.K., July 2007
  • 2006
    • Invited Lecture: Space&Place: Towards a translocal institute, with Jani Scandura, for Land2 Annual Symposium, PLACE Center, University of West England, Bristol, U.K., 2006.
    • Invited Lecture: Memory Traces: Digging for the difficult pasts in Berlin and Cape Town, Department of Geography Research Seminar Series, University of Nottingham, 2006.
    • Invited Lecture: Urban Awakenings: Matter, Hauntings, Returns, for Reflections on Katrina: Place, Persistence and the Lives of Cities symposium, Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, January 2006.
  • 2005
    • Keynote: Unfinished Stories and Wounded Cities: Archaeological Approaches to Memory in Berlin and Cape Town, with Valmont Layne, District Six Museum Director at Hands On District Six: Landscapes of Postcolonial Memorialisation international conference, Cape Town, South Africa, 2005.
    • Keynote Panel: Memorialization, World Heritage, and Human Rights, with Valmont Layne, District Six Museum Director, for international conference, Hands On District Six: Landscapes of Postcolonial Memorialisation, Cape Town, South Africa, 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: Digging in the New Berlin: Hauntings, Hypervisibility and Hungry Tourists, interdisciplinary lecture series on Making the Past Present, London Group of Historical Geographers, Institute of Historical Research, University College London, U.K., 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, Department of History and Public History Public Lecture Program, University of Western Cape, South Africa, 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: Aestheticizing the Rupture: Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, U.K. 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: The Matter of Memory: Objects, Ghosts, Landscapes, Department of Geography, Bristol University, U.K., 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: Listening to Wounds: Place, Memory and Transgenerational Phantoms, Department of Geography Aberystwth University, Wales, U.K., 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: Berlin’s New Cultural District: A Cosmopolitan Holocaust Memory? Department of Geography, Hull University, U.K., 2005.
    • Invited Lecture: The New Berlin, for Reading the City ‘Photography and Urban Cultures’ and ‘Culture, Globalisation and the City graduate courses, Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London, U.K., 2005.
  • 2004
    • Invited Lecture: The New Berlin: From Kiez to Kosmos, seminar series on Cosmopolitan Cities, Department of Geography, Dartmouth University, 2004.
    • Plenary: Emplacing Memory through the City: The New Berlin, Plenary Session: The Spatial Turn in History, German Historical Institute conference, Washington, D.C., 2004.
    • Keynote Panel: Bodies-Cities, for Topos/U-Topos conference, Graduate Students in Romance Studies, University of Minnesota, 2004.
  • 2003
    • Keynote: Notes on/from the “field”: A geographer’s attempt at negotiating the terrains of interdisciplinarity Women in German Annual Conference, Kentucky, 2003.
    • Keynote Panel: Feminist Perspectives on the Study of Things German: Interdisciplinarity Applied, Women in German Annual Conference, Kentucky, 2003.
  • 2001
    • Invited Lecture: Old Berliners Tour the New Berlin: Representing the City through Bodies, Buildings, and Maps, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001.
    • Plenary: Haunted Landscapes of a Nation: Commemorating Shame and Violence in Berlin, for Manifestations of National Identity in Modern Europe international conference, European Studies Consortium, University of Minnesota, 2001.
    • Invited Lecture: Remembering Traumatic Pasts in Berlin: Cultures of Public Memory in Germany, Legacies of Authoritarianism symposium, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 2001.
    • Invited Lecture: The Topography of Terror: Memory and Landscape in Berlin, Inaugural Speaker for Supporting Women in Geography Lecture Series, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, 2001.
  • 2000
    • Invited Lecture: Place and Memory in the ‘New’ Berlin: Place-marketing and Schaustelle Berlin, Colloquium Series, Departments of Geography and European Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2000.
  • 1999
    • Invited Lecture: Unearthing Berlin’s ‘Open Wounds:’ Social Activism and Archeological Approaches to Landscape and Memory, Colloquium Series, Department of Geography and Center for European and Russian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999.
  • 1998
    • Invited Lecture: Orte der Erinnerung aus geographischer Perspektive am Fallbeispiel der Region Berlin, Department of Geography, Humboldt University, Berlin, 1998.
    • Invited Lecture: Was soll der ‘Ort der Täter’ nach der Wende bedeuten? Überlegungen zur gesellschaftlichen Funktion der ‘Topographie des Terrors’ aus einer amerikanischen Sicht, Topography of Terror International Documentation Center, Berlin, 1998.
  • 1994
    • Invited Lecture: Reconstructing memory after unification: Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen as Contested Sacred Spaces, Alexander von Humboldt Conference, Washington, D.C., 1994.
  • 1993
    • Invited Lecture: Representing German Identity after Unification: The German History Museum and the Politics of Place, University of Wales, Lampeter, Department of Geography, 1993.

Invited Participation in International Symposia

  • 2006
    • Designing for Forgetting and Remembering interdisciplinary and international workshop, University of California, Los Angeles, December 2006.
  • 2005
    • International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience Annual Meeting, hosted at the District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa, with visits to Constitution Hill, Johannesburg; Manenberg Community Center, Langa Heritage Center, Protea Village, and District Six Museum, Cape Town, May 2005.
  • 2004
    • Activating the Past: An International Symposium on Historic Sites of Conscience, Museums Studies and Arts of Citizenship Programs, University of Michigan, February 2004.
  • 2001
    • Orte des Verbrechens zwischen Geschichte und Stadtentwicklung: Zur Nachnutzung des ehemaligen SSTruppenlagers des Konzentrationslagers Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg, Brandenburg Museum- Memorial Center Foundation, City of Oranienburg, Berlin Academy of Arts, and Federal Center for Political Education, Germany, May 2001.
    • Fact and Fiction in Post-Authoritarian Societies, Legacies of Authoritarianism Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, March 2001.
  • 1993
    • Should the ruins be preserved? Tempus Program and Auschwitz Educational Center, Oszwecium, Poland, November 1993.
    • The Future of Terezin, German national museum-memorial organization (Gedenkstättenreferat) and Terezin Museum-Memorial Center, Czech Republic, 1993.
    • Auschwitz as Symbol and Relict in the Twenty-First Century, Cultural Studies Institute, Essen, Germany, March 1993.
  • 1992
    • Memorial Museum Centers after Unification, Institute for Biography and History, Fern University, Hagen, Germany, November 1992

Conference Presentations (*refereed conference)

  • 2010
    • Heritage Landscapes: Making Community Stories Visible in Hurt Park, Roanoke, for session on: Placemaking: Revealing Histories of Diverse Communities, Virginia American Planning Association (APA) annual conference, Norfolk, VA, May 2010
    • The Limitations of Resilience: The District Six Museum’s Place-based Ethics of Care, for session on: Post-Apartheid Geographies of South Africa and its Region, annual Association of American Geographers conference, Washington D.C., April 2010
  • 2009
    • Memory Work As An Empowerment Development Strategy In Postcolonial Cities, annual Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) national conference, Washington D.C., October 2009
  • 2008
    • Memory-work in Wounded Cities: Resilience and Place-Based Ethics of Care, for session on: Redemptive Resilience: Recovery from Trauma and Disaster, at: Virginia Tech Symposium on Enhancing Resilience to Catastrophic Events through Communicative Planning, November, 2008.*
    • Remnants of Communism in East Berlin: Urban Renewal at Rosa Luxemburg Platz, European Social Science History Association biannual conference, Lisbon, March 2008*
  • 2007
    • Denkraum Hannah Arendt: Encountering political thought spatially, in Berlin After the Spatial Turn panel, German Studies Association national conference, San Diego, October 2007*
    • Thanatopolitics and Transition: Haunted Archaeologies of the Postcolonial City, with Julian Jonker, Annual Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference, San Francisco, March 2007
  • 2006
    • The Kennington ArtsLav: Stories and spaces of a public toilet, with Fiona Henderson, AAG conference, Chicago, April 2006.
  • 2005
    • Spectral Ground: Excavations and Ruins in Berlin and Cape Town, in Spectro-Geographies sessions, Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers (RGS/IBG) Conference, London, U.K., 2005*
  • 2004
    • Cosmopolitan Place as Global Witness: Historic Site Museums of Conscience and the Construction of Humanitarian Ideals, in Universalisms and Particularisms session, sponsored session by the International Geography Union (IGU) Cultural Geography Group, RGS/IBG and IGU Conference, Glasgow, U.K., 2004*
    • Writing Place, Writing Memory in Ethnography Performed sessions, Annual AAG Conference, Philadelphia, 2004
  • 2003
    • Living with Ghosts in Hauntings sessions, AAG Conference, New Orleans, 2003 Post-Totalitarian Identity: Public Memory in Germany and Russia, co-authored and presented by Juliet Johnson, with Ben Forest, in Reterritorializing and Rescaling Borders and Identities in Post-Socialist Europe session, AAG Conference, New Orleans, 2003.
  • 2002
    • Cosmopolitan places: Historic sites, national memory, transnational networks, in Rights to the City conference, IGU Political Geography Specialty Group, Rome, Italy, 2002*
    • From Construction Sites to Showcases: Locals as Tourists of/in the New Berlin, AAG Conference, Los Angeles, 2002.
  • 2001
    • Aestheticizing Absence/Aestheticizing Trauma: Cultures of Public Memory at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, in Commemoration, Memory, and the Creation of Political Community (session co-organizer), AAG Conference, New York, 2001
  • 2000
    • Schaustelle Berlin: Producing City Space through Museumspeak, in annual German Studies Association (GSA) conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 2000*
  • 1998
    • Place and the Politics of Memory: A Geo-ethnography of Memorials and Museums in Berlin in Warren J. Nystrom Dissertation Awards sessions, AAG Conference, Boston, 1998*
  • 1997
    • Continuity and Change After Unification: Place and the Politics of Memory at Berlin’s Topography of Terror in German Unification and Changing Visions of the Nazi Past: Architecture, Memorials, and Television, GSA Conference, Washington D.C., 1997*
    • Neotraditionalism in the History of American Urban Planning, Southern American Studies Association Conference, Seaside, 1997*
    • Staging the Past: (Re)designing Berlin’s Historic District in Landscape as Spectacle (session co-organizer), AAG Conference, Fort Worth, 1997
    • Preserving the Future: The Topography of Terror as a Site of Perpetrators, in German Sites of Memory, European Studies Consortium Conference on Project Urban Europe, Minneapolis, 1997*
  • 1996
    • Exhibiting National Identity: ‘Chapters of Life’ at the German History Museum in Berlin in Geographies of nationalism (session co-organizer), AAG Conference, Charlotte, 1996
  • 1995
    • Topographie des Terrors: Fashioning a Place of Memory in the Ruins of the Gestapo Headquarters in Place, Memory, and Identity: The cultural politics of the memorialization process (session organizer), AAG Conference, Chicago, 1995
  • 1994
    • Places of Contested Memory: Concentration Camp Memorial Centers after the Wall, AAG Conference, San Francisco, 1994
    • Museums, Monuments, and Memorials: ‘Places of Memory’ in a New Europe, Remembering for the Future II Conference, Berlin, Germany, 1994*
  • 1992
    • Interpreting Heimat in the Federal Republic: The Texts and Contexts of Edgar Reitz's Film, Midwest Graduate Seminary in History and German Studies, Chicago, 1992
    • The Cultural Production of Place and Community: Neotraditional Towns and Urban villages in Geographies of Difference: Studies in the Social Production of Space and Place, (session co-organizer), AAG Conference, San Diego, 1992.

 

Karen E. Till
e-mail:  ktill@vt.edu