We aim to conceptualize Holocaust literature as a literary system that operates transnationally across languages and contexts and that intersect with discourses of power, prestige, and privilege.
David G. Roskies, The Jewish Theological Seminary
Some seventy-five years after the Holocaust, the time is right for a new history of the diversity of literary responses in testimony, poetry, prose and drama, composed in multiple languages and around the world. On the one hand, the passage of time makes it possible to perceive underlying patterns and to grasp Holocaust Literature as a global literary system rather than as simply a collection of texts in discrete languages or national traditions that respond in one way or another to a particular historical event. This implies a degree of intellectual detachment, notwithstanding the horror. On the other hand, the need to confront the Holocaust—and the ways the Holocaust has shaped what has come since—seems more urgent than ever. With the final passing of the last survivors, the genocide of European Jews is at last truly becoming historical. Yet antisemitic and other racially motivated intolerance, hate speech, and even violence are everywhere still present and indeed surging.
This project presents a new history of Holocaust Literature through a dynamic understanding of its multiple levels of operation and the ways these levels interconnect and interact, particularly across temporal periods, geographical and political borders, and languages. Chapters in the book explore Holocaust Literature as a response to the horror of the event itself, as a product (in part, at least) of the contexts in which it is written, and as an assemblage of literary artefacts that circulate—or do not circulate—according to the vagaries of publishers’ choices, the politics and practices of translation, evolving genre conventions, geo-political relationships, and readers’ changing tastes. The ambition is that the volume will not only quickly become a standard reference work but also establish a more systematic engagement with its topic: contexts, canon and circulation.
Our contributors and the project in the press
Stuart Taberner was interviewed by The Washington Post for “Immersive replica of Anne Frank’s secret annex goes to New York exhibit”
WWU News – WWU’s Ray Wolpow Institute to host international symposium on Holocaust literature
Our project is funded by
In order to rethink Holocaust literature, our contributors convene in yearly seminars:
Cambridge History of Holocaust Literature Workshop, New York, 19-22 September 2024
Cambridge History of Holocaust Literature Workshop, Western Washington University at Bellingham, 29-30 September 2023