Laura Levitt

THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2022 AT 11:15 AM – 12:45 PM EDT

The University of Warsaw, American Studies Center

We are pleased to announce the lecture “American Jewish Loss After the Holocaust: An Object Lesson” by Prof. Laura Levitt (Temple University).This lecture is a part of the 2021/2022 Spring Edition of the American Studies Colloquium Series.Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85864913094Thursday, May 12, 2022
5:15 pm CET

BIO
Laura Levitt is Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies, and Gender at Temple University where she has chaired the Religion Department and directed both the Jewish Studies and the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Programs. Levitt is the author The Objects that Remain (2020); American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007); and Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home (1997) and a co-editor of Impossible Images: Contemporary Art After the Holocaust (2003) and Judaism Since Gender (1997). Levitt edits NYU Press’s North American Religions Series with Tracy Fessenden (Arizona State University) and David Harrington Watt (Haverford College).

ABSTRACT
This talk asks critical questions about the future of Holocaust commemoration in the United States. How will the Holocaust continued to be remembered as memory and history come together, as those survivors who have so powerfully told their stories and lived their lives after the Holocaust are coming to their last days.? This talk describes how the Shoah has been commemorated in the United States and what is at stake at this historical crossroad. It addresses what it means to consider “after” as not just after the war, or after the Shoah, but as memory becomes history. It describes how the Holocaust has been remembered in the United States in the past and how it might be remembered going forward. It reconsiders how the loss that is the Shoah is experienced and understood in relation to other American Jewish losses not as competitive memories but rather in terms of how different losses touch and illuminate each other. And finally, it focuses on what will continue to prompt those memories, the people but also increasingly, the objects that occasion these enactments.2 OZNCheck our our entire roster of events at the ASC website: https://www.asc.uw.edu.pl/…/american-studies…/..