A Conversation with Omer Bartov, Marianne Hirsch and Rashid Khalidi, moderated by Sonali Thakkar.
Please join the Cultural Memory Seminar and the Center for Palestine Studies for a discussion of the uses and abuses of memory in the aftermath of October 7, 2023. Attendees are asked to read four short articles by the speakers in advance of the event.
This program is co-presented by the Cultural Memory University Seminar and the Center for Palestine Studies.
Advanced registration is required.
Attendees are asked to read three short articles by the speakers in advance of the event.
SPEAKERS
Omer Bartov is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written extensively on war crimes and genocide. Recent publications include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), winner of the National Jewish Book Award; Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (2022), and Genocide, the Holocaust, and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023). He is currently writing a book tentatively titled “The Broken Promise: A Personal Political History of Israel and Palestine.”
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita in English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender at Columbia, and co-director of the University Seminar on Cultural Memory. She writes about the transmission of memories of violent histories across generations, a process she has termed “postmemory.” Her recent books include School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference (2020), co-authored with Leo Spitzer, and the co-edited volume Women Mobilizing Memory (2019). She is working on a book about reparative memory.
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies Emeritus at Columbia University. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago, was co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and served as President of the Middle East Studies Association. He is the author of eight books, most recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler- Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.
MODERATOR
Sonali Thakkar is Associate Professor of English at NYU. She is the author of The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought (Stanford 2023).
READINGS
Omer Bartov. “As a Former IDF Soldier and Historian of Genocide, I Was Deeply Disturbed by My Recent Visit to Israel.” The Guardian, 13 August 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov.
Marianne Hirsch. “Rethinking Holocaust Memory after October 7.” Public Books, 15 July 2024. https://www.publicbooks.org/rethinking-holocaust-memory-after-october-7/.
Rashid Khalidi. “‘A New Abyss’: Gaza and the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.” The Guardian, 11 April 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-gaza-and-the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine.
Naomi Klein. “How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war.” The Guardian, 5 October 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/05/israel-gaza-october-7-memorials.