[Anthropgrad] WIP SEMINAR -Ailene Stein - 4 April REMINDER

[Jodi Parvey]

Dear All,  Please circulate the attached poster 
on your email lists. Apologies for cross posting. Many thanks Jodi

The Research School of Humanities presents

WORK-IN-PROGRESS SEMINAR
At the Theatrette, Old Canberra House

1-2.30 pm, Friday 4 April

Telling Holocaust Stories in Postwar America

Arlene Stein
Sociology, Rutgers University

The salience of the Holocaust today­exemplified 
by Hollywood films such as “Schindler’s List,” 
institutions such as the United States Holocaust 
Memorial Museum in Washington DC, Holocaust 
testimony projects and courses on college 
campuses­suggests that the destruction of 
European Jewry has become a central part of 
Jewish and even American public culture.

Yet only three or four decades ago, Holocaust 
stories were told almost exclusively by survivors 
and their families­if they were told at all­and 
the Holocaust was not a central aspect of Jewish 
identity at least in terms of its public expression in the United States.

In my paper I provide an account of the growth of 
“Holocaust consciousness” in the postwar US, 
focusing on the production, circulation and 
consumption of stories. These stories, which 
circulated for much of the postwar period in the 
private enclaves of families, and within survivor 
communities, migrated into the public sphere in the 1980s and 90s.

What has made Holocaust stories proliferate, and 
become more easily tellable the further we have 
gotten from the terrible event itself? The power 
to tell a story, under conditions of one’s 
choosing, necessarily raises questions of 
political agency. Who has the power to tell 
Holocaust stories, and how? Whose stories are 
permitted to shape public conceptions of the 
Holocaust, and indeed to define the meaning of the event?

Arlene Stein is a sociologist whose work examines 
the intersection of identities, culture, and 
social change. She is the author of three books 
and the editor of two collections of essays. 
Among them is The Stranger Next Door: The Story 
of a Small Community’s Battle Over Sex, Faith, 
and Civil Rights, an ethnographic study of a 
conservative Christian campaign to restrict 
sexual rights. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a 
Lesbian Generation, an earlier work, examines the 
impact of feminism on women’s sexual identities. 
She is currently studying culture and trauma; 
specifically, how children of atrocity, born 
after genocide and mass death, come to understand 
their familial histories, and how they use this 
information, individually and collectively, to 
engage, work through, and represent the past.


Convenors: Ken Taylor and Stephen Foster
For general enquiries please contact:
Phone: 61252434
Email: <mailto:administration.rsh at anu.edu.au>administration.rsh at anu.edu.au
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/

All Welcome
Please circulate widely
This lecture is free and open to the public. 
Parking vouchers are available upon request.
ANU COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE 
TO THIS LIST PLEASE CLICK ON THE WEB SITE BELOW 
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