Invitation to meet Verne Harris at Bates College

Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce that Verne Harris, Head of the Memory
Programme at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg, will be at
Bates College in Lewiston, Me, from Oct. 11 to 14. He will be doing a
public lecture Wed. evening, Oct. 12 tentatively scheduled for 6:30pm.
We is also available for an open discussion with archivists, librarians,
curators, and other individuals interested in cultural heritage, memory
and justice from 2 to 4 pm that same day, Oct. 12. This will be an
exciting opportunity to have an engaging, informal dialog with one of
the leading figures in archival thinking.

Verne Harris has written extensively on issues of social justice,
cultural memory, and reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa. In
addition to his work at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, he is an honorary
research associate at the University of the Witwatersrand. He
participated in a range of structures which transformed South Africa's
apartheid public records system, including the African National
Congress's Archives Committee, the Arts and Culture Task Group, the
Consultative Forum which drafted the National Archives of South Africa
Act, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the South African
History Archive. Widely published, he is best known for the books
Exploring Archives: An Introduction to Archival Ideas and Practice in
South Africa (1997, 2000 and 2004), Refiguring the Archive (2002), A
Prisoner in the Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela's Prison Archive (2005),
and Archives and Justice (2007). He is also the author of two novels,
both of which were short-listed for South Africa's M-Net Book Prize. He
also compiled the notes and other writings which make up Nelson
Mandela's new biography, Conversations with Myself (see:
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-11/world/mandela.book_1_nelson-mandela-robben-island-verne-harris?_s=PM:WORLD).

Verne Harris' visit to Bates is being sponsored by the Mellon Innovation
Fund and the Material Culture Working Group.

If you would like to attend the discussion, would you kindly send me an
email letting me know of your interest. I want to make sure I schedule
the event in an appropriately sized room.

Many thanks and I look forward to seeing many of you at Bates on Oct. 12.

All best,
Kat