Conference: Genocide, Memory, Justice: The Holocaust in Comparative Contexts

November 5-6, 2009Conference

Levis Faculty Center

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Organizers:

Peter Fritzsche (History, Illinois)

Harriet Murav (Comparative Literature & Slavic Languages and Literatures, Illinois)

Michael Rothberg (English & Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, Illinois)

Schedule:

Thursday, November 5

9:30-10:00: Coffee and pastry

10:00 am: Welcome by Matti Bunzl, Peter Fritzsche, Harriet Murav, & Michael Rothberg

10:15-11:45 am: Keynote Lecture 1

Dagmar Herzog (CUNY Graduate Center), “Sexual Violence in the Holocaust in Comparative Perspective”

11:45 am -1:15 pm: Lunch

1:15-3:00 pm: Panel 1 - Visual Culture, Aesthetics, and the Holocaust

Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), “The Unconquered (1945)—The First Holocaust Film”

Paul B. Jaskot (DePaul University), “The Nazi Party’s Use of Heinrich Wölfflin: The Intersection of Art History and the Political History of Antisemitism”

3:00-3:15 pm: Coffee break

3:15-5:45 pm: Panel 2 - Rethinking Genocide in Comparative Perspective

Karl Jacoby (Brown University), "'Exterminate all the Brutes': Intersections and Fault Lines Between American Indian History and Genocide Studies"

Dirk Moses (University of Sydney), "The Holocaust and World History"



Scott Straus (University of Wisconsin, Madison), "Rethinking Comparative Research on Genocide"



Friday, November 6

9:30-10:00 am: Coffee and Pastries

10:00-11:30: Keynote Lecture 2

Carolyn Dean (Brown University), “’Styles of Dying,’ or Minimalism in Victim Narratives”

11:30 am -1:00 pm: Lunch

1:00-2:45 pm: Panel 3 - Economies of Justice and Memory

Krista Hegburg (Columbia University), “The Obligation to Receive: Reparations and Misrecognition in the Czech Republic”

R. Clifton Spargo (Marquette University), "The Economy of Memory: The Cultural Status of the Holocaust in the United States"

2:45-3:00 pm: Coffee Break

3:00-4:45: Panel 4 - Victims and Perpetrators: From Testimony to Fiction

Alexandra Garbarini (Williams College), “’Words to Outlive Us’: Testimonies and Telling the Truth about Mass Atrocities”

Erin McGlothlin (Washington University), “Constructing the Mind of the Perpetrator in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones”

4:45-5:30 pm: Closing Roundtable

Participants: Matti Bunzl, Peter Fritzsche, Harriet Murav, Michael Rothberg, and others

View biographies of the speakers.

View abstracts of the papers.