Sara R. Horowitz Gives Annual Shapiro Scholar Lecture: "Reclaiming the 'Ruins of Memory': Gender, Agency, and Imagination in Stories of the Shoah"

Wednesday, March 23, 2022 - 04:00 AM PDT

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Shoah Foundation present
Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture by Prof. Sara R. Horowitz (Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities, York University, Canada)
2020-2021 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence
(Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) 

In recounting the past, Holocaust survivors deliberately or unconsciously craft the stories they recount about the Shoah. Whether through literature, memoirs, or testimony, survivors shape stories about the past while signaling what remains unsaid. Deferred memories - stories told many decades after the events occurred - often address issues that survivors did not dare or could not bear to recount earlier. Looking at these deferred stories through the lens of gender, we will explore how survivors craft accounts that insist on reclaiming, owning, and interpreting what the writer Ida Fink called “the ruins of memory,” often against the grain and in tension with academic interpretation.

This lecture will be followed by a lunch. Advanced RSVP is required.

Image Description: The event image is the sculpture wall of the Gleis 17/Track 17 memorial in Berlin.

Reclaiming the 'Ruins of Memory': Gender, Agency, and Imagination in Stories of the Shoah

2022 Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture Series

In recounting the past, Holocaust survivors deliberately or unconsciously craft the stories they recount about the Shoah. Whether through literature, memoirs, or testimony, survivors shape stories about the past while signaling what remains unsaid. Deferred memories - stories told many decades after the events occurred - often address issues that survivors did not dare or could not bear to recount earlier. Looking at these deferred stories through the lens of gender, we will explore how survivors craft accounts that insist on reclaiming, owning, and interpreting what the writer Ida Fink called “the ruins of memory,” often against the grain and in tension with academic interpretation.