Joint Reading at Humanities Center

shapeimage_2-3Mark your Calendars!
Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Bird Library, Peter Graham Scholarly Commons
Syracuse University Humanities Center

For more information click on the title below, or the image on the left…

Remembering the Holocaust Through Fiction and Facts: Joint Reading by Susanna Piontek and Guy Stern

Guy Stern, leading international scholar on exile from Germany and Europe during the Third Reich and on the Holocaust, an emigrant and survivor himself, has dedicated his life as a scholar to German and German-Jewish literature. Throughout his career he focused on the memory of those who had to flee from persecution and on the memory of those, who could not and perished. Among his numerous books are Nelly Sachs: Selected Poems; War, Weimar and Literature: The Story of the “Neue Merkur” 1914-1925; Literature and Culture in Exile; and Nazi Book Burning and the American Response. Together with Rebecca Swindler, he edited in 2008 the proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Altruism, titled The Rewards of Raising Righteous Children.

Susanna Piontek has always been interested in Jewish tradition, literature, music, and of course history. Writing short stories on a wide variety of topics, she also described problems of Jewish life in post war Germany and Israel. This interest intensified upon meeting her husband to be in 2004 who was not only a Holocaust survivor but also is working at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The two authors will engage in a dialogue about their encounters, how to communicate with each other and with their German and American audiences. One particular mode of discourse is translation, a means not restricted to Guy Stern’s translation of Piontek’s prose, but also a metaphor for fictional accounting. Remembrance and representation are at the heart of the joint reading, which will be the high point of a series of events around Guy Stern’s and Susanna Piontek’s visit to Syracuse University.

Contact Information:
Karina von Tippelskirch
kvontipp@syr.edu
315-443-5383