University of Toronto hosts Dr. Schallié – ‘Relational Memory, Shared Authority and Reciprocity in the Making of Barbara Yelin’s Emmie Arbel: The Color of Memory’ – Feb 24, 2025
On February 24, Dr. Schallié will visit the University of Toronto to present on ‘Relational Memory, Shared Authority and Reciprocity in the Making of Barbara Yelin’s Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory‘.
Event description:
In this presentation, Charlotte Schallié discusses her arts-based collaborative research with graphic novelist Barbara Yelin and Holocaust child survivor Emmie Arbel. Their work together resulted in two publications, the most recent one being Emmie Arbel. The Colour of Memory (2023), co-edited with Alexander Korb. Barbara Yelin’s graphic novel expands Arbel’s seven-page witness testimony into a book-length graphic narrative inviting us to reconsider the role of creative practice in gathering and representing living memory. As a published graphic novel, Emmie Arbel. The Colour of Memory is a multi-genre creation. It is a collaborative piece of scholarship based on mutual care and relationship building, an artistic rendering of a life narrative, and an artwork that documents creative practice as research.
When Barbara Yelin met Emmie Arbel for the first time at the Ravensbrück Memorial in 2019, Arbel conveyed to the artist that she remembered very little “from the war.” In traditional eyewitness testimonies, such memory gaps create significant obstacles resulting in an incomplete oral history document. Yet, in Yelin’s artwork, Arbel’s embodied memories and silent interactions are not just made visible, they are inseparably interwoven into the (hi)storytelling. Dr. Schallié will elaborate on how creative renderings of nonverbal expressions of memories in Emmie Arbel. The Colour of Memory may challenge our understanding of testimony, agency, and absence.
“Relational Memory, Shared Authority and Reciprocity in the Making of Barbara Yelin’s Emmie Arbel. The Colour of Memory”
Monday, February 24, 2025
4:00 – 6:00 pm PST
Room 100 – Jackman Humanities Building
170 St. George Street
University of Toronto