Laura Levitt

May 4th, 12pm CT/1 pm EST

In The Objects That Remain (2020), Laura Levitt (Temple University) draws on her own experience as a victim of rape as she revisits the material remains of acts of violence and their place in Holocaust memory. The “essence of this volume,” she writes, is the “resonance between artifacts and their power to witness to the crimes against humanity, against individuals, and their ability to make holy the profane.” It is a “meditation on the allure of once ordinary artifacts that were brushed by violence: on where they take us and how they become animate, the rites and rituals around them, and the arts of holding that transform them into sacred objects through our tender care.”

Respondents: Bevin Blaber (Teaching Fellow, Divinity School) and Tahel Goldsmith (PhD student, Dept. of History).
Moderator: Leora Auslander, Professor of Modern European Social History, Dept. of History.

This event is part of the series “Greenberg Book Conversations” sponsored by the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. It is open to the public, but registration is required (see the link below).

Register in advance for this meeting:https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpfuivqTwuHNyZtGJuok6wfShA_CZu77gF
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Levitt writes in her introduction to The Objects that Remain, “This book is a meditation on the allure of once ordinary artifacts that were brushed by violence: on where they take us and how they become animate, the rites and rituals around them, and the arts of holding that transform them into sacred objects through our tender care,” alerting readers that she will begin by examining objects through the lens of a scholar of religion. She starts this journey by looking at sacred objects in the Judeo-Christian tradition such as garments stained by the blood of Jewish martyrs and relics of medieval saints, and then relates these objects to the idea of divine justice.  As Levitt writes, because she did not receive justice in the legal sense – her case never went to trial and all remaining physical evidence of the crime vanished – she “wanted to legitimate [her] own contemporary longings by placing them in this tradition.” But her efforts take a different turn.

To read all of this story, go to: http://js.emory.edu/news/news-stories-container/laura-levitt.html

To hear this conversation https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/the-objects-that-remain-laura-levitt/

“When we consider criminal evidence—proof positive that terrible things happened—we often imagine their role in a courtroom. But not all evidence operates that way. Most of the tainted objects held even in police property rooms never make their way to court. In the case of the vast trove of rescued Holocaust objects held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), which have likewise never been to court, we often think about their role as empirical, historical evidence of the crimes of genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators. And yet there are those intangible qualities that attract us to such objects, that draw our attention.”

Read More at Penn State University Press, Tumblr! https://pennstateuniversitypress.tumblr.com/

By Kali Handelman and Laura Levitt

Published on February 4, 2021

Kali Handelman interviews Laura Levitt about her new book, The Objects That Remain

To Read the Full Interview:

https://therevealer.org/on-objects-trauma-and-loss/