UPDATE

full name / name of organization: 
Bettina Hofmann/University of Wuppertal

CfP: Translated Memories: Transgenerational Perspectives in Literature on the Holocaust

We are looking for abstracts for a follow-up publication to the colloquium "Translated Memories" that took place at the Steinheim Institute in Essen, Germany, on July 14, 2015, which addressed the subject of writing about the Holocaust today: How can memories of the Holocaust be constituted and transformed in a transgenerational and transnational perspective?

The concept of translation is of pivotal interest in this context. When talking about "translation," we literally mean code switching. However, the term "translation" is also appropriate if one wants to describe psychological mechanisms and cultural processes.

Three authors (Richard Aronowitz, Carol Ascher, Doron Ben-Atar), all writing in English, and four literary scholars, hailing from Germany, Great Britain, and the U.S., reflected on this subject based on their own and other literary texts. They addressed questions such as what kinds of authority members of the first, second, and third generations possess, and what means and purposes they invoke in remembering the Holocaust. They spoke about the role of languages used, the different attitudes to German, English, and Hebrew by members of each generation, and what difference these languages played in the process of remembering. It turned out that material objects that have survived—letters, personal objects, etc.— also played important roles in their ways of remembering.

In our follow-up publication to the conference we would like to include other voices, again by writers and scholars, and even look beyond English. Though many survivors/refugees emigrated to English speaking countries like Australia, Britain, and the United States, these countries were by no means the only destinations. Israel, and thus Hebrew, but also Latin American countries, and thus Spanish, come to mind. The underlying question remains: How are memories of the Holocaust constituted and transformed in a transgenerational and transnational perspective? What particular obstacles or new possibilities do the "new" languages offer?

Please submit a one-page abstract in English by September 16, 2015 to Bettina Hofmann, bhofmann@uni-wuppertal.de and Ursula Reuter, reuter@steinheim-institut.org