Berman Center Holocaust Conference

	The Conference REPRESENTING THE HOLOCAUST Practices, Products, Projections Sponsored by the Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies
The Project The Exhibit Group Tours Lehigh Events Community Events The Conference Calendar Information BCJS Homepage	The Berman Center for Jewish Studies will hold its sixth international conference, Representing the Holocaust: Practices, Products, Projections, May 21-23, 2000, in Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. Events begin 1:15 p.m. Sunday, May 21, and conclude on Tuesday afternoon, May 23. Evening lectures are scheduled both Sunday (Peter Novick) and Monday (Art Spiegelman). Conference Description Presenters and Topics Schedule Schedule (pdf format) Registration Accommodations Travel Public lectures by Novick & Spiegelman (pdf format) *Description. In the first conference of its kind, a distinguished gathering of artists, photographers, curators, cultural critics, and historians will analyze the ways in which the Holocaust is represented in and through art, photographs, museums, and monuments. Specialists from the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Israel will address such questions as: How is memory and awareness of the Holocaust being transmitted and produced through representational practices and cultural forms? What diverse forms of representational practices are being used to represent the Holocaust in the visual arts? What distinctive problems confront artists seeking to represent the Holocaust? What representational strategies are evident in Holocaust museums and memorials? Who are the intended audiences and what are the projected outcomes for these museums and memorials? Return to top of document Conference Schedule* Sunday, May 21 All sessions will be held in Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center. 12:30 p.m. Registration, Atrium 1:15 p.m. Introductory Remarks, Laurence J. Silberstein, Director, Philip & Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies Session 1 - 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. A Survivor’s Daughter: Art as Autobiography Mindy Weisel, artist and Adjunct Professor, Corcoran College of Art and Design Representing the Holocaust Photographically —Fifty Years Later Debbie Teicholz, photographer Representing the Holocaust: One Artist’s Struggle Judy Chicago, artist, author, and creator of “Holocaust Project” 5:30 p.m. Reception and dinner, Asa Packer Room, University Center Session 2 - 8:00 p.m. (open to the public) What’s Special about Representing the Holocaust? Peter Novick, Professor of History, University of Chicago Underwritten by Geraldine and Irving Schaffer ’31 Monday, May 22 Session 3 - 9:00 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. Between Narration and Deconstruction: Conflicts, Problems, and Issues of Some Post-Holocaust Painting and Representation Stephen C. Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota Judy Chicago’s “Holocaust Project” and Other Representations of Genocide Edward Lucie-Smith, curator, lecturer, and author Session 4 - 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon From Ashes to the Rainbow Alice Lok Cahana, artist and author 12:00 noon Lunch at local restaurants Session 5 - 1:30 p.m. - 3:05 p.m. Invisible Topographies: Looking for the Mémorial de la Déportation in Paris Shelley Hornstein, Associate Professor of Art History, York University, Toronto The Politics of Memorialization Michael Berenbaum, writer, lecturer, teacher, and consultant Session 6 - 3:30 p.m. - 5:05 p.m. Reckoning with Ghosts: Remembering the Holocaust in America Michelle A. Friedman, Instructor of English, Haverford College; Ph.D. Candidate in English, Bryn Mawr College Holocaust Icons Oren Baruch Stier, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Florida International University 6:15 p.m. Dinner, Asa Packer Room, University Center Session 7 - 8:00 p.m. (open to the public) Maus: Packing Memory into Little Boxes Art Spiegelman, comix artist and creator of Maus and Maus II Underwritten by the Paul Levy Fund for Jewish Studies in Honor of Dr. Jack DeBellis and the E. Franklin Robbins Fund in Jewish Studies Tuesday, May 23 Session 8 - 9:00 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. Art after MAUS: Contemporary Art and the Imaging of Nazism Norman L. Kleeblatt, Susan and Elihu Rose Curator of Fine Arts, The Jewish Museum, New York “Don’t Touch My Holocaust”: Young Israeli Artists Challenging the Holocaust Taboo Tami Katz-Freiman, curator and art critic Session 9 - 11:00 a.m. - 12:35 p.m. Memory by Means of Controversy: The Holocaust Toys of Ram Katzir and Zbigniew Libera Ernst van Alphen, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Leiden Facing the Body of Horror Ariella Azoulay, Academic Director, Department of Theoretical Studies, Camera Obscura School of Art, Tel Aviv 12:35 p.m. Lunch Session 10 - 2:00 p.m. - 4:20 p.m. Holocaust Memory: Then and Now Barbie Zelizer, Associate Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania Photographic Testimonies and the Staging of Holocaust Memory Andrea Liss, Assistant Professor of Art History and Cultural Theory, California State University, San Marcos Architecture, Landscape, and Holocaust Memory: The "House" and the (Erased) Garden Julian Bonder, Visiting Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Roger Williams University, and architect for the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University Return to top of document Conference Presenters and Topics Facing the Body of Horror A discussion of two artistic projects--"Hiroshima Collection" by Marie Ange Guilleminot and "Live and Let Die as Eva Braun" by Roee Rosen. ARIELLA AZOULAY, Academic Director, Department of Theoretical Studies, Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv, and professor of art history and art philosophy. The Politics of Memorialization MICHAEL BERENBAUM, former Director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and editor of The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined and Witness to the Holocaust. Architecture, Landscape, and Holocaust Memory: The "House" and the (Erased) Garden JULIAN BONDER, architect, Julian Bonder & Associates, and Visiting Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Roger Williams University. He is the architect for the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University. From Ashes to the Rainbow ALICE LOK CAHANA, artist, author, and Holocaust survivor. Her solo exhibitions include "From Ashes to the Rainbow" and "From My Mother's Prayerbook." Representing the Holocaust: One Artist's Struggle JUDY CHICAGO, artist, author, and creator of "The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light" and "The Dinner Party." Between Narration and Deconstruction: Conflicts, Problems, and Issues of Some Post-Holocaust Painting and Representation STEPHEN C. FEINSTEIN, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, coeditor of Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 21st Century Part Two (University Press of America) and guest curator of "Witness and Legacy: Contemporary Art about the Holocaust." Reckoning with Ghosts: Remembering the Holocaust in America MICHELLE FRIEDMAN, instructor of Engish at Haverford College and a Ph.D. candidate in English at Bryn Mawr College, currently writing her thesis on "Transforming Acts of Witness: Reading Contemporary American Holocaust Literature." Invisible Topographies: Looking for the Memorial de la Deportation in Paris SHELLEY HORNSTEIN, Associate Professor of Art History, York University, Toronto, who is currently coediting a book entitled Representation and Remembrance: The Holocaust in Art (Blackwell), a volume that explores post-war visual art and film that challenge and shape history, collective memory, and personal and national identity. "Don't Touch My Holocaust": Young Israeli Artists Challenging the Holocaust Taboo TAMI KATZ-FREIMAN, author and independent curator. Art after Maus: Contemporary Art and the Imaging of Naziism NORMAN L. KLEEBLATT, Susan and Elihu Rose Curator of Fine Arts, The Jewish Museum, New York, who is currently planning an exhibition "Art after Maus: Contemporary Art and the Imaging of Nazism," which opens at The Jewish Museum in Spring 2000. Photographic Testimonies and the Staging of Holocaust Memory ANDREA LISS, Assistant Professor of Art History and Cultural Theory, California State University of San Marcos, and author of Trespassing through Shadows: Memory, Photography, and the Holocaust. Judy Chicago's "Holocaust Project" and Other Representations of Genocide EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH, curator, lecturer, and author of numerous books on art and related subjects including Movements in Modern Art since 1945, American Art Now, Art in the 1980s, and Visual Arts in the 20th Century. What's Special about Representing the Holocaust? PETER NOVICK, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Holocaust in American Life (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). Maus: Packing Memory into Little Boxes ART SPIEGELMAN, comix artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus and Maus II. Holocaust Icons OREN BARUCH STIER, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Florida International University, who is completing a book for Princeton University Press entitled Memory Matters: Contemporary Holocaust Memorial Culture. Representing the Holocaust Photographically: Fifty Years Later DEBBIE TEICHOLZ, the child of Holocaust survivors and photographer with an intense interest in the Holocaust who has exhibited extensively in the United States and Israel. Memory by Means of Controversy: The Holocaust Toys of Ram Katzi and Zbigniew Libera ERNST van ALPHEN, Director of Communication and Education, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, and author of Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory (Stanford University Press, 1997). A Survivor's Daughter: Art as Autobiography MINDY WEISEL, artist and adjunct professor at the Corcoran Museum of Art's School of Art. Born in Bergen-Belsen DP camp after World War II, she has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshorn Museum, the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum of New York, and others. Holocaust Memory, Then and Now BARBIE ZELIZER, Associate Professor of Communication, Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago, 1998), which was recently awarded the Tolerance Book Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance. She is currently editing Visual Culture and the Holocaust. Return to top of document

The Berman Center for Jewish Studies will hold its sixth international conference, Representing the Holocaust: Practices, Products, Projections, May 21-23, 2000, in Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. Events begin 1:15 p.m. Sunday, May 21, and conclude on Tuesday afternoon, May 23. Evening lectures are scheduled both Sunday (Peter Novick) and Monday (Art Spiegelman).

Description. In the first conference of its kind, a distinguished gathering of artists, photographers, curators, cultural critics, and historians will analyze the ways in which the Holocaust is represented in and through art, photographs, museums, and monuments. Specialists from the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Israel will address such questions as:

How is memory and awareness of the Holocaust being transmitted and produced through representational practices and cultural forms?

What diverse forms of representational practices are being used to represent the Holocaust in the visual arts?

What distinctive problems confront artists seeking to represent the Holocaust?

What representational strategies are evident in Holocaust museums and memorials? Who are the intended audiences and what are the projected outcomes for these museums and memorials?

12:30 p.m. Registration, Atrium

1:15 p.m. Introductory Remarks, Laurence J. Silberstein, Director, Philip & Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies

Session 1 - 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

A Survivor’s Daughter: Art as Autobiography
Mindy Weisel, artist and Adjunct Professor, Corcoran College of Art and Design

Representing the Holocaust Photographically —Fifty Years Later
Debbie Teicholz, photographer

Representing the Holocaust: One Artist’s Struggle
Judy Chicago, artist, author, and creator of “Holocaust Project”

5:30 p.m. Reception and dinner, Asa Packer Room, University Center

Session 2 - 8:00 p.m. (open to the public)

What’s Special about Representing the Holocaust?
Peter Novick, Professor of History, University of Chicago Underwritten by Geraldine and Irving Schaffer ’31

Session 3 - 9:00 a.m. - 10:35 a.m.

Between Narration and Deconstruction: Conflicts, Problems, and Issues of Some Post-Holocaust Painting and Representation
Stephen C. Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota

Judy Chicago’s “Holocaust Project” and Other Representations of Genocide
Edward Lucie-Smith, curator, lecturer, and author

Session 4 - 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon

From Ashes to the Rainbow
Alice Lok Cahana, artist and author

12:00 noon Lunch at local restaurants

Session 5 - 1:30 p.m. - 3:05 p.m.

Invisible Topographies: Looking for the Mémorial de la Déportation in Paris
Shelley Hornstein, Associate Professor of Art History, York University, Toronto

The Politics of Memorialization
Michael Berenbaum, writer, lecturer, teacher, and consultant

Reckoning with Ghosts: Remembering the Holocaust in America
Michelle A. Friedman, Instructor of English, Haverford College; Ph.D. Candidate in English, Bryn Mawr College

Holocaust Icons
Oren Baruch Stier, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Florida International University

6:15 p.m. Dinner, Asa Packer Room, University Center

Session 7 - 8:00 p.m. (open to the public)

Maus: Packing Memory into Little Boxes
Art Spiegelman, comix artist and creator of Maus and Maus II Underwritten by the Paul Levy Fund for Jewish Studies in Honor of Dr. Jack DeBellis and the E. Franklin Robbins Fund in Jewish Studies

Tuesday, May 23

Session 8 - 9:00 a.m. - 10:35 a.m.

Art after MAUS: Contemporary Art and the Imaging of Nazism
Norman L. Kleeblatt, Susan and Elihu Rose Curator of Fine Arts, The Jewish Museum, New York

“Don’t Touch My Holocaust”: Young Israeli Artists Challenging the Holocaust Taboo
Tami Katz-Freiman, curator and art critic

Session 9 - 11:00 a.m. - 12:35 p.m.

Memory by Means of Controversy: The Holocaust Toys of Ram Katzir and Zbigniew Libera
Ernst van Alphen, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Leiden

Facing the Body of Horror
Ariella Azoulay, Academic Director, Department of Theoretical Studies, Camera Obscura School of Art, Tel Aviv

12:35 p.m. Lunch

Session 10 - 2:00 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.

Holocaust Memory: Then and Now
Barbie Zelizer, Associate Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Photographic Testimonies and the Staging of Holocaust Memory
Andrea Liss, Assistant Professor of Art History and Cultural Theory, California State University, San Marcos

Architecture, Landscape, and Holocaust Memory: The "House" and the (Erased) Garden
Julian Bonder, Visiting Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Roger Williams University, and architect for the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University

Facing the Body of Horror
A discussion of two artistic projects--"Hiroshima Collection" by Marie Ange Guilleminot and "Live and Let Die as Eva Braun" by Roee Rosen.
ARIELLA AZOULAY, Academic Director, Department of Theoretical Studies, Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv, and professor of art history and art philosophy.

The Politics of Memorialization
MICHAEL BERENBAUM, former Director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and editor of The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined and Witness to the Holocaust.

Architecture, Landscape, and Holocaust Memory:
The "House" and the (Erased) Garden
JULIAN BONDER, architect, Julian Bonder & Associates, and Visiting Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Roger Williams University. He is the architect for the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University.

From Ashes to the Rainbow
ALICE LOK CAHANA, artist, author, and Holocaust survivor. Her solo exhibitions include "From Ashes to the Rainbow" and "From My Mother's Prayerbook."

Representing the Holocaust: One Artist's Struggle
JUDY CHICAGO, artist, author, and creator of "The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light" and "The Dinner Party."

Between Narration and Deconstruction:
Conflicts, Problems, and Issues of
Some Post-Holocaust Painting and Representation
STEPHEN C. FEINSTEIN, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, coeditor of Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 21st Century Part Two (University Press of America) and guest curator of "Witness and Legacy: Contemporary Art about the Holocaust."

Reckoning with Ghosts:
Remembering the Holocaust in America
MICHELLE FRIEDMAN, instructor of Engish at Haverford College and a Ph.D. candidate in English at Bryn Mawr College, currently writing her thesis on "Transforming Acts of Witness: Reading Contemporary American Holocaust Literature."

Invisible Topographies:
Looking for the Memorial de la Deportation in Paris
SHELLEY HORNSTEIN, Associate Professor of Art History, York University, Toronto, who is currently coediting a book entitled Representation and Remembrance: The Holocaust in Art (Blackwell), a volume that explores post-war visual art and film that challenge and shape history, collective memory, and personal and national identity.

"Don't Touch My Holocaust":
Young Israeli Artists Challenging the Holocaust Taboo
TAMI KATZ-FREIMAN, author and independent curator.

Art after Maus:
Contemporary Art and the Imaging of Naziism
NORMAN L. KLEEBLATT, Susan and Elihu Rose Curator of Fine Arts, The Jewish Museum, New York, who is currently planning an exhibition "Art after Maus: Contemporary Art and the Imaging of Nazism," which opens at The Jewish Museum in Spring 2000.

Photographic Testimonies
and the Staging of Holocaust Memory
ANDREA LISS, Assistant Professor of Art History and Cultural Theory, California State University of San Marcos, and author of Trespassing through Shadows: Memory, Photography, and the Holocaust.

Judy Chicago's "Holocaust Project"
and Other Representations of Genocide
EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH, curator, lecturer, and author of numerous books on art and related subjects including Movements in Modern Art since 1945, American Art Now, Art in the 1980s, and Visual Arts in the 20th Century.

What's Special about Representing the Holocaust?
PETER NOVICK, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Holocaust in American Life (Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

Maus: Packing Memory into Little Boxes
ART SPIEGELMAN, comix artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus and Maus II.

Holocaust Icons
OREN BARUCH STIER, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Florida International University, who is completing a book for Princeton University Press entitled Memory Matters: Contemporary Holocaust Memorial Culture.

Representing the Holocaust Photographically:
Fifty Years Later
DEBBIE TEICHOLZ, the child of Holocaust survivors and photographer with an intense interest in the Holocaust who has exhibited extensively in the United States and Israel.

Memory by Means of Controversy:
The Holocaust Toys of Ram Katzi and Zbigniew Libera
ERNST van ALPHEN, Director of Communication and Education, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, and author of Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory (Stanford University Press, 1997).

A Survivor's Daughter: Art as Autobiography
MINDY WEISEL, artist and adjunct professor at the Corcoran Museum of Art's School of Art. Born in Bergen-Belsen DP camp after World War II, she has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshorn Museum, the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum of New York, and others.

Holocaust Memory, Then and Now
BARBIE ZELIZER, Associate Professor of Communication, Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago, 1998), which was recently awarded the Tolerance Book Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance. She is currently editing Visual Culture and the Holocaust.

Return to top of document