The Dornsife Commons
(Re)collections:
Trauma, Collective Memory and the Archive
February 10-11, 2012
Panelists:
Dan Leshem is Associate Director for Research at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for
Visual History and Education. The Institute’s Visual History Archive contains nearly 52,000
testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses recorded in 56 countries and 32
languages. Leshem works with faculty, students, and researchers at USC and across the world to
help them develop courses, scholarly publications, and educational resources that utilize the
Institute’s testimonies. Dr. Leshem holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature & Jewish Studies
from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He also served for several years as Program
Manager of the Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT) website, which strives to educate scholars
and the general public of the risks of denial and other forms of hate speech. The grandson of
Holocaust survivors and relative of dozens of family members swallowed up by the Nazi
genocide, Leshem has devoted his life’s work to listening to and educating with the voices of
survivors. He has presented across the country and the world including Israel, Lithuania, and
across the U.S.
Email: dan.leshem@usc.edu
Josh Kun's research focuses on the arts and politics of cultural connection, with an emphasis on
popular music, the cultures of globalization, the US-Mexico border, and Jewish-American
musical history. He is director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's The Norman
Lear Center and co-editor of the book series "Refiguring American Music" for Duke University
Press. He holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. He is the author of Audiotopia:
Music, Race, and America (UC Press) which won a 2006 American Book Award. He is coauthor of And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past As Told By The
Records We've Loved and Lost (Crown, 2008).
Email: jkun@usc.edu
Oren Meyers is a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication, University of Haifa and
a visiting Prof. at the Jewish Studies Department, SDSU. His research interests focus on
journalistic practices and values, collective memory and popular culture. Among his recent
publications: On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age (2011). London:
Palgrave McMillan (co-edited with Motti Neiger & Eyal Zandberg); Expanding the Scope of
Paradigmatic Research in Journalism Studies: The Case of Early Mainstream Israeli Journalism
and Its Discontents (2011). Journalism; and Structuring the Sacred: Media Professionalism and
the Production of Mediated Holocaust Memory (2011) The Communication Review (with
Neiger & Zandberg).
Email: omeyers@com.haifa.ac.il
The Dornsife Commons
(Re)collections:
Trauma, Collective Memory and the Archive
February 10-11, 2012
Viet Thanh Nguyen is an associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at
the University of Southern California. He is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and
Politics in Asian America (Oxford University Press, 2002). He has finished a collection of short
stories and is working on a comparative study of American and Vietnamese memories and
representations of the American war in Viet Nam, focusing on the literary and visual arts.
Email: vnguyen@usc.edu
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik is a third year doctoral student at the Annenberg School for
Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. Neta’s research interests
include the relations between individual and collective memories, particularly as they relate to
the media. Her work takes an innovative approach to the study of collective memory, combining
quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the role of media memory in shaping
collective memories.
Email: kliglerv@usc.edu
Performers:
Denise Uyehara is an award-winning performance artist, writer, and playwright whose work has
been presented internationally. For over two decades her work has investigated what marks us in
our migration across borders of identity. A founding member of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls.
Uyehara conducts workshops for artists and a wide range of communities – LGBTQ, women,
people of color and seniors. She conducts lectures, performances and other residency activities
and is a frequent lecturer at University of California, Irvine.
Email: dahoodore@aol.com
Genevieve Erin O'Brien is a Vietnamese/Irish/American artist, culinary adventurer, community
organizer, popular educator, incidental academic and occasional nanny to artists, activists, and
academics alike. O'Brien lives and works in Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She
holds an MFA in Studio Art/Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
O'Brien has been conducting research for a new body of art work in Vietnam as a Fulbright
Fellow in 2009 and 2010. O'Brien uses performance, video and installation to explore notions of
“home” and “homeland”. As a mixed race child of Vietnamese immigrant mother and an IrishAmerican father, she investigates issues such as war and memory, transnational identity and
belonging, and multiple identities and its attendant baggage. Using food, humor, narrative and
conceptual structures, she develops work that is invested in collective healing from trauma,
whether personal or inherited to further social justice and cultural understanding. In 2008, The
Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago presented O’Brien’s conceptual performance, Peace
Salon as part of the 12x12 series showcasing emerging artists. Her conceptual and durational
The Dornsife Commons
(Re)collections:
Trauma, Collective Memory and the Archive
February 10-11, 2012
performances, as well as installations and videos have been presented at galleries and public
venues in numerous cities including Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and across the US in Los
Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC. Called a “modern day Virgil” by the LA Weekly,
O’Brien’s one woman shows address hate crimes, homophobia, and violence against women,
with sensitivity and humor. As a community activist and popular educator, O’Brien has
developed programs for Sisterfire, Southern Californians for Youth, the UCLA Labor Center’s
Summer Internship Program, and APALA (Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance). She was a
founding member of Arts In Action, a political and cultural arts collective space in the heart of
Los Angeles. More information at www.erin-obrien.com
Organizers:
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik bio under panelists section
Ana Paulina Lee is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at USC and holds a Master’s
degree in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures from NYU. Her research focuses on chinoserie and
representations of China in Latin America from the colonial period to the present. She also works
on music in 20th century Latin America, focusing on transnational exchanges between Cuba,
Brazil, and the United States.
Email: analee@usc.edu
Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye is a PhD Candidate in the Art History Department at the University of
Southern California, where she earned her Master’s degree in Art History in 2009. Her
dissertation focuses on contemporary Mexican artists who reinterpret Pre-Columbian visual
culture in their work. She has participated in summer programs in both archaeology and
anthropology, and has worked in various museums in San Francisco, New York, and
Washington, D.C.
Email: jennifer.reynolds@usc.edu