Making and Unmaking Literature in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna Ghettos

Description

Join Professor Sven-Erik Rose, author of Making and Unmaking Literature in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna Ghettos, for a conversation with Hannah Pollin-Galay, (the Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies and director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, UMass, Amherst), and David Mazower, the Yiddish Book Center’s research bibliographer and editorial director. Making and Unmaking Literature in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna Ghettos is the first study devoted to how little-known but essential authors grappled with the destitution of ghetto existence by writing within, at the limits of, and against an array of literary scenarios, tropes, plot lines, and generic conventions, including those of nature lyric, modernist interior monologue, the realist social novel, the detective story, and the gothic horror tale. Rose’s readings of these literary works reveal how authors asserted their humanity by insisting on writing works of literature. This program is co-sponsored by the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies at UMass-Amherst. Sven-Erik Rose is professor of German and of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis. His first book, Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789–1848, was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies in the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought.