The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies (IHGMS) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, presents its event program for the Spring of 2023. All IHGMS events are recorded and made available to the public via our YouTube Channel. For more imformation, visit the webpage at: https://www.umass.edu/ihgms/spring-2023-event-programming
Wednesday, January 25, 2023, 4:00pm (EST)
International Holocaust Memorial Day Event:
A conversation between Barry Trachtenberg and Mindl Cohen on Trachtenberg’s
The Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye
In the early 1930’s in Berlin, Germany, leading Jewish intellectuals embarked upon a project to publish a popular Yiddish language encyclopedia of general knowledge that would serve as a bridge to the modern world. Soon after the "Algemeyne Entsiklopedye" (General Encyclopedia) was announced, Hitler’s rise to power forced its editors to flee to Paris. The scope and mission of the project repeatedly changed before its final volumes were published in New York City in 1966. In a recent book The Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye (Rutgers University Press, 2022), Barry Trachtenberg has traced this fascinating story. He and Mindl Cohen, Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, will be in conversation about his book and the general themes it raises. The conversation will be moderated by Alon Confino, Director of the IHGMS. [This event is co-sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center - https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/]
Madeleine Cohen is the Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center and a visiting lecturer in Jewish Studies at Mount Holyoke College.
Barry Trachtenberg is the Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University, North Carolina.
Alon Confino is Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies, and Director of the IHGMS, at UMass Amherst.
Watch the recording of this event on our YouTube Channel here.
Thursday, March 2, 2023, 1:00pm (EST)
A panel discussion on Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew', by Antony Lerman
Antisemitism is one of the most controversial topics of our time. We talk so much about antisemitism, not so much because cases of antisemitism have spiked—the evidence for this is complex, contradictory, and inconclusive—but because we deeply disagree on how to define it. In his thought-provoking book, Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew' (Pluto Press, 2022), Antony Lerman argues that this confusion is the result of a 30-year process of redefinition of the phenomenon, casting Israel as the persecuted “collective Jew” and the main victim of antisemitism. The consequences of this redefinition, argues Lerman, are alarming: suppressing free speech on Palestine and Israel, legitimizing Islamophobic forces, and making Jews more, not less, vulnerable. Discussing the book will be Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Lila Corwin Berman, Noura Erakat, and Shirin Seikaly. Antony Lerman will respond and Alon Confino will moderate.
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite is a Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at NYU.
Lila Corwin Berman holds the Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History at Temple University, where she directs the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History.
Noura Erakat is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and the Program of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick; and is also a human rights attorney.
Antony Lerman is a Senior Fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue in Vienna, an Honorary Fellow at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton, and is an Associate Editor of Patterns of Prejudice.
Sherene Seikaly is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Register for this event in advance here.
The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem present their “Encounters” annual series: Aftermaths
Wednesday, March 15, 2023, 1:00PM (EDT) | 19:00 (Jerusalem)
A conversation with Nicole Fox on her book After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda
In After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), Nicole Fox explores the ways memorials can shape the experiences of survivors of the Rwanda genocide decades after mass violence has ended. She investigates how memorialization can both heal and hurt, especially when they fail to represent all genders, ethnicities, and classes of those afflicted. Drawing on extensive interviews with Rwandans, Fox uncovers the voices silenced by dominant narratives—and how this erasure is an act of violence itself. In conversation with Fox will be Alon Confino and Amos Goldberg.
Nicole Fox, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, Sacramento. Her research centers on how racial and ethnic contention impacts communities, with a focus on how remembrances of adversity shape social change and collective memory.
Alon Confino is a Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies, and Director of the IHGMS, at UMass Amherst.
Amos Goldberg is the The Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, and the Head of the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Register for this event in advance here.
Monday, April 17, 2023 1:00PM (EDT) | 19:00 (Rome) | 20:00 (Jerusalem)
Special event for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel:
Stories of Italian Jewish Families: From Clara Sereni to Anna Foa and Lia Tagliacozzo – The Story of the Twentieth Century
Female Italian Jewish novelists and scholars have been in recent decades at the center of a riveting literary phenomenon: they wrote about their family experience in Italy in a century that saw Jews leave the ghetto and being accepted in society, followed by fascism, 1938 Racial Laws, the Holocaust, post-1945 accommodation to the tumults of the 1960’s and beyond. The late novelist Clara Sereni, historian Anna Foa, and writer Lia Tagliacozzo have recounted their personal and family experiences in evocative books delineating convoluted Jewish, Italian, gender, and other identities within the crucible of Italy’s twentieth century. This panel offers a unique opportunity to encounter an outstanding Italian literary tradition that places Jewish life within Italian way of life, a relationship of love, warts and all. Foa and Tagliacozzo will discuss their own work, while Puma Valentina Scricciolo will discuss the work of Sereni. Alon Confino will moderate.
Anna Foa is a retired professor of Modern History at the Sapienza University of Rome. She will discuss Portico d'Ottavia 13. Una casa del ghetto nel lungo inverno del 1943 (Bari, Laterza, 2013), about a house in the ghetto during the Nazi oppucation of Rome, and La famiglia F (Bari, Laterza 2018), about her family.
Lia Tagliacozzo is a freelance journalist and writer. She has written on Jewish culture and the Shoah, as well as books for children and adults. She will discuss her book La generazione del deserto - storie di famiglia, di giusti e di infami durante le persecuzioni razziali in Italia (Manni editore, 2020), in which she tells the stories of her families and how they represent the many fates of Italian Jews during the Shoah.
Puma Valentina Scricciolo teaches at the Università degli Studi di Perugia. She is a Member of the jury of Clara Sereni National Literary Prize (Premio Letterario Nazionale Clara Sereni). She will discuss Sereni’s book ll gioco dei regni (Firenze, Giunti, 1993; new edition3 (riedizione aggiornata, Giunti 2017), about the Sereni family – communists, Zionists, and others – in the twentieth century.
Register for this event in advance here.
The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem present their “Encounters” annual series: Aftermaths
Thursday, April 20, 1:00pm (EDT) | 20:00 (Jerusalem)
A conversation with Adel Manna on his book Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956 (University of California Press, 2022)
In Nakba and Survival, Adel Manna tells the story of the Palestinians in Haifa and the Galilee during, and in the decade after, mass dispossession. Manna uses oral histories, diaries, memoirs, and archival sources to reconstruct the social history of the Palestinians who remained and returned to become Israeli citizens. Manna shows in his path-breaking book that remaining in Israel in the aftermath of the Nakba under Israeli military government were acts of resilience in their own right. In conversation with Manna will be Alon Confino and Amos Goldberg.
Dr. Adel Manna is a Palestinian historian specializing in history of Palestine during the Ottoman period and Palestine in the 20th century. He has taught since the early 1980's at The Hebrew University and Bir Zeit University. Currently, he is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute.
Alon Confino is a Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies, and Director of the IHGMS, at UMass Amherst.
Amos Goldberg is the The Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and the Head of the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Register for this event in advance here.
0 Replies