HAUNTED HISTORIES, HALLOWED GROUND

Friday October 28th, 6-7:30pm

Temple Gallery @ Tyler School of Art

2001 N. 13th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19122

At Halloween, many abandoned mental health institutions and prisons become haunted attractions. Historians Kelly George and Anne Parsons will speak about the use of abandoned institutions for material gain, especially through marketing efforts that depict those institutions as haunted. Also attend an accompanying exhibition that considers what can we learn from these pasts that haunt our present. 

 Kelly George is a Doctoral Student in Mass Media and Communication with a concentration in Disability Studies. Her dissertation research examines public memory of Pennhurst State School and Hospital in news media, in popular culture and in grassroots preservation efforts.

Anne Parsons is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is also a Graduate Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities. She holds an MA in Public History from New York University and studies the history of prisons and asylums in late twentieth century Pennsylvania.