Conversations about . . . Museums and Civic Engagement

Liz Sevcenko, Director of the International Coalition of Historic Sties of Conscience, and UM Professor of American Culture, Julie Ellison, engage in a conversation about museums and civic engagement, Winter 2006.

Our featured guest, Liz Sevcenko, is the Director of the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, “a world-wide network of organizations and individuals dedicated to teaching and learning how historic sites and museums can inspire social consciousness and action.” Liz Sevcenko is well known to local audiences from her role as a principal organizer and featured speaker at “Activating the Past: An International Symposium on Sites of Conscience,” held at the University of Michigan in 2003, and as Keynote Speaker at the 2004 Michigan Museums Association annual meeting. Additional credentials include a five-year tenure as Vice President for Interpretation at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York and affiliations with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Museum of the City of New York, the! Eldridge Street Project, and the American History Workshop.

Liz Sevcenko will be interviewed by Dr. Julie Ellison, Professor of American Culture and Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, University of Michigan. Imagining America is a national consortium of 70 colleges and universities that fosters the public role of the arts, humanities, and design through building new coalitions and working for structural change in higher education.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Michigan Museum Studies program and the Office of the Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.