WHAT WE REMEMBER. WHAT TO FORGET.

John Gabrieli and Lewis Hyde in Conversation
Moderated- Jill Slosburg-Ackerman

Wednesday, April 26, 2023
 The Foundry

A conversation about memory and forgetting with scientist, John Gabrieli, and writer, poet, and cultural critic, Lewis Hyde.  Memory is a major focus for Gabrieli.  His lab employs neuroimaging to study the brain structure and function of people with neuropsychiatric challenges such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.  Hyde’s latest book, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth, personal psychology, politics, art & spiritual life.

John Gabrieli, Ph.D is a scientist. His research is informed by his personal experience working with the famous amnesic patient HM whose case was seminal in the modern understanding of the organization of human memory. For the last 25 years he has focused on mental health, where forgetting is a goal for helping people with PTSD or the rumination that often haunts people with depression.
He is the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the Director of the Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and holds appointments from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Department of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital.  He has studied and written widely on the brain’s mechanisms for human cognition, including memory, thought and emotion. In 2008 Gabrieli was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which cited his "penetrating analyses of the nature of human memory, its neural substrates, its development, and its problems."
 
Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World (1998) uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the disruptive intelligence that all cultures need if they are to remain lively and open to change. Common as Air(2010) is a spirited defense of our “cultural commons,” that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University, Hyde taught writing and American literature for many years at Kenyon College. He is a trustee of MacDowell and a founding director of the Creative Capital Foundation. Hyde’s most recent book, A Primer for Forgetting, explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth, personal psychology, politics, art & spiritual life is reviewed in the March 2023 issue of the New York Review of Books.

Founded in 2012, Catalyst Conversations creates programs that pair artists and scientists for intimate conversations. These conversations have explored topics at the forefront of science and art-making today such as theoretical mathematics, watershed conservation, public art, STEAM education, neuroscience and more. In a region full of innovation and knowledge, Catalyst Conversations offers a unique opportunity for participants of all ages and educational backgrounds to access new knowledge. Ideas are not only presented to the public, they are held open for extended conversation allowing a unique entry to intellectual inquiry. 
 
The Foundry addresses the problems of financial and spacial inequities affecting artists and other makers by providing access to specialized space and equipment for hands-on creation. Offering maker spaces, multi-purpose rooms, a dance studio, art studio, performance space, and demonstration kitchen, The Foundry brings STEM and the Arts under one roof for the Cambridge community with its spaces available for reservation and public programming.

Video recording will be available at a later date. Follow us on social media and join our Catalyst Conversations email list to be notified when the video is released! 

Image: Jill Slosburg-Ackerman, Mourning Bench, Mt. Auburn Cemetery

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