To close the term, we will hold a joint session with the Modern Jewish Studies Reading Group to discuss Holocaust (post)memory and photographs with two pieces from Laura Levitt and Marianne Hirsch & Leo Spitzer. Levitt reflects on her relationship to the Holocaust as an American Jew, whose family did not suffer persecution. She critically engages Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory,” which focuses on the experiences of the children of survivors. The Hirsch & Spitzer chapter discusses a photograph of Hirsch’s parents and her own grappling with it, and the interactions of cross-generational memories.

Laura Levitt, “Looking out from under a long shadow” (from American Jewish Loss After the Holocaust, 2007).

Marianne Hirsch & Leo Spitzer, “What’s wrong with this picture?” (from The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust, 2012).