Calendar

The UMass Amherst Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies hosts a daylong symposium honoring the work of James Young, Distinguished Professor emeritus of English and Judaic and Near Eastern studies and founding director of the institute.

The symposium, “Edges, Textures, Stages: James Young and the Field of Memory Studies,” will be followed by a reception until 6:30 p.m. The symposium and reception are free and open to the public.

Young, an important figure in the field of memory studies, taught at UMass Amherst from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He also has consulted with municipal agencies in developing memorials and was a jury member for the National 9/11 Memorial competition.

He is the author of “Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust,” “The Texture of Memory,” “At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture,” and “The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between.”

The symposium will feature panel talks by visiting scholars, including:

• Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College and author of “The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial”
• Alice M. Greenwald, president and chief executive officer of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum
• Debórah Dwork, Rose Professor of Holocaust History, founding director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University and co-author of “Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946” and “Auschwitz”
• Horst Hoheisel, sculpture artist and designer of “counter-monuments” such as “The Crushed Brandenburg Gate”
• Laura Levitt, professor of religion, Jewish studies and gender at Temple University and author of “American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust”
• Samuel Kassow, Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College and author of “Who will Write our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive”

The Duomo & The Great Synagogue: An Evening of Italian Culture

An evening of Jewish and Florentine architecture, culture, music, and food.

• Informal talks about the history and architecture of two of Florence, Italy’s grandest and most iconic structures — the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral (the Duomo) and the Great Synagogue — by  Ross King, author of the national bestseller Brunelleschi’s Dome, and noted scholar Professor Francesco Spagnolo, Curator of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley.

• Q&A session moderated by Gail Price, former Executive Director of The American Institute of Architects Santa Clara Valley Chapter.

•The San Jose Chamber players with Cantor Sharon Bernstein presenting both Jewish and Italian songs.

• Italian appetizers and ice cream.

European Humanities University (EHU) and the Center for Belarusian Community and Culture in Vilnius will host a premiere presentation of “Extermination” — an audiovisual installation about the Great Synagogue of Grodno, which was constructed in the 16th century and was rebuilt many times after devastating fires. 

Kseniya Shtalenkova (lecturer in the Academic Department of Humanities and Arts at EHU, Philosophy PhD candidate) is the project curator and Viktoryia Bahdanovich (fourth-year student of the BA program in Visual Design) is the project production designer and executive producer.

 The “Extermination” audiovisual installation is a monologue on the history of the place as well as an individual experience of a person in time and space.

The installation has been created as a part of the project on “Preservation and Actualization of Former Synagogues in Belarus for the Benefit of Local Communities” by Stsiapan Stureika, Professor of Humanities and Arts at EHU. Project research conducted for the work on the installation was conducted with the participation of EHU students.

The presentation will be delivered in Russian with subtitles in English. 

Register by November 26.

Click here to register on Zoom (or for in-person attendance)

The event will be also streamed online via EHU’s Facebook page.

NOTE: you can attend the event physically at the Belarusian House (Vilniaus g. 20) by pre-registration at the same link to register on Zoom

Reception and curators’ tour at the newly opening Jewish Museum in the Kaliningrad Synagogue.

The exhibition “Through Koenigsberg with Jewish Eyes” will be presented to the public. The members of the Jewish Congregation have been able to visit the new museum since mid-September.