The Barnes County Historical Society Lecture Series Season 24, in partnership with the “What In The World?” Group Presents: May 15th Kelly LaFramboise Director for Mission and Inclusion, Concordia College, Moorhead, MN: “Eternal Witnesses: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors Even After Death.” 7PM Thursday, May 15th at the Barnes County Museum. (315 Central Ave N. Valley City, ND)

This talk explores “Dimensions in Testimony,” a groundbreaking initiative by the USC Shoah Foundation that preserves Holocaust survivor testimonies through interactive holographic technology. The project allows audiences to engage in real-time conversations with pre-recorded, three-dimensional representations of survivors, ensuring that future generations can learn firsthand about the atrocities of the Holocaust, even after the survivors themselves are no longer with us. This presentation will delve into the ethical considerations of representing lived trauma through Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the powerful educational impact of combining survivor memory with artificial intelligence to combat denial, distortion, and historical amnesia.

Dr. Kelly LaFramboise is a cultural anthropologist whose research critically examines the intersections of racial discourse, media representations of race, and the enduring legacies of eugenics. With a Master’s and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma, and dual undergraduate degrees in History and Anthropology from Loyola University Chicago, Dr. LaFramboise’s scholarship focuses on how individuals and societies select, valorize, or reject specific racialized genetic features in accordance with deeply embedded ideological beliefs. Her work interrogates the ways in which race is visually and discursively constructed in contemporary and historical contexts, particularly through popular culture and scientific narratives of American Indians. She has held prestigious research fellowships with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, the USC Shoah Foundation, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum, where she has contributed to projects that explore the cultural transmission of memory, the ethics of representation, and the historical consequences of racial pseudoscience.

The public is cordially invited

All Lectures are at the Barnes County Historical Society Museum and held in conjunction with Valley City State University.  They are free and open to the public.

For more information contact Wes Anderson at 701-845-0966

Barnes County Historical Society

315 Central Ave N
Valley City, ND 58072