History and Culture: Reckoning With the Past

History and Culture: Reckoning With the Past

Memory Wars is a new podcast that explores how Germany has reckoned with the Holocaust and what America can learn from that as it grapples with its own legacy of slavery and racism. Radio IQ’s Mallory Noe-Payne spent a year in Germany on a Fulbright grant listening to personal stories from German citizens and how they, and the country as a whole, are coming to grips with their Nazi past. When she returned, Mallory teamed with Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond Times-Dispatch to explore America’s response over time to its history of racism and slavery. 

In this seminar with the Lifelong Learning Institute at Virginia Tech, the two will discuss how these memory wars have played out, the similarities and differences in cultural and historical contexts, and the themes of education, memorialization and accountability that have emerged.

Mallory Noe-Payne is the Richmond Bureau Chief for Radio IQ and recipient of a Fulbright Young Professional Journalist grant. Michael Paul Williams, a columnist for the Richmond Times Dispatch, won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of columns in 2020 on the dismantling of Richmond's monuments to white supremacy.