Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 27, 2002|Volume 31, Number 4

Conference marks anniversary of Holocaust archive

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale will mark its 20th anniversary with an international conference featuring such famed novelists as Elie Wiesel and E.L. Doctorow, as well as noted scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies.

The conference, titled "The Contribution of Oral Testimony and Genocide Studies," will take place Sunday-Tuesday, Oct. 6-8.

Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, will present the keynote address on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. in Battell Chapel, corner of Elm and College streets. He is the author of more than 40 books of fiction and nonfiction, including "Night," "A Beggar in Jerusalem," "The Fifth Son" and two volumes of memoirs. For his literary and human rights activities, he has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the Medal of Liberty Award and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor.

Doctorow is the award-winning author such books as "Ragtime," "The Book of Daniel," "City of God," "Loon Lake" and "Billy Bathgate."

Other participants include the novelist Aharon Appelfeld ("The Conversion," "Tzili: The Story of a Life"); prize-winning journalist Philip Gourevitch of The New Yorker; literary scholar Lawrence L. Langer of Simmons College; historian Dahlia Ofer of Hebrew University; and psychiatrist Walter Reich of George Washington University, who is the former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Yale participants include sociologists Jeffrey Alexander, Kai Erikson and Paul Gilroy, who is also chair of the African American Studies Department; Geoffrey Hartman, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature; Paula Hyman, the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History; Dori Laub, professor of psychiatry; University Librarian Alice Prochaska; Joanne Rudof, archivist for the Fortunoff Video Archive; and Richard Szary, director of manuscripts
and archives.

The conference is organized into eight panels, a symposium and associated events. All conference events are free and open to the public.

The event will begin on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. with opening remarks by Hadassah Lieberman, a political and social activist who is the wife of U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Beginning at 10 a.m., there will be panels throughout the day on "Listening," "Teaching," "Trauma" and "Historical Yield." All will be held in Rm. 102 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC), 63 High St.

The following day, the panels "Pathways to Intellectual Access," "Genres of Testimony," "Sociological and Cultural Perspectives" and "Field Work" will be held in the lecture hall of Sterling Memorial Library, 121 High St. These begin at 9:30 a.m.

Later on Monday, at 7:30 p.m., the film "Witness: Voices from the Holocaust" will be screened in Rm. 102, LC.

A symposium on "Holocaust Literature: Freedoms ,and Responsibilities" will be held on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, corner of Wall and High streets. The symposium will feature poet Irving Feldman, Doctorow, Appelfeld and the novelist Thane Rosenbaum ("The Golems of Gotham").

In conjunction with the conference, a special exhibition will be on view in the Memorabilia Room of Sterling Library. Other related events include:

Friday, Oct. 4, 4 p.m. -- a talk on "A Comparison of Holocaust and Gulag Literature" by Leona Toker of Hebrew University in the Comparative Literature Library, Bingham Hall, Old Campus;

Wednesday, Oct. 9, 4 p.m. -- a discussion of "Poetry and Testimony" by Susan Gubar of Indiana University at a location to be announced; and 8 p.m. -- a Graduate School Colloquium with Joanne Rudof and Geoffrey Hartman in Rm. 211 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St.

Thursday, Oct. 10, 2:30 p.m. -- a talk on "The Seed Remembers: Native American and Cambodian Genocide Survivors and Their Gardens" by Patricia Klindienst, a spring 2003 writer-in-residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, in the conference room of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, 77 Prospect St.

A complete schedule of conference events is available at www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/conference/index.htm.

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, founded in 1982, is dedicated to the recording, collection and preservation of videotaped oral testimonies of survivors and witnesses. The archive holds more than 4,200 testimonies and over 10,000 hours of videotaped recordings in cooperation with 37 affiliate projects in North America, South America, Europe, Israel and the former Soviet Union.

The conference was made possible by a gift from Darrell Ross '69. Additional funding has been provided by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, James and Jacqueline Gordon, the Judaic Studies Program, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, Patricia and Robert Weis '41 and the Yale University Library.

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