This will be a hybrid conference, with presentations both online and in-person. Those who have registered to attend the conference online will receive a Zoom-link.
Tuesday 27 June 2023 (Antwerp)
- 09.00-09.30 Official opening: Vivian Liska (Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp), Frédéric Crahay (Auschwitz Foundation, Brussels), Sławomir Jacek Żurek (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland), and Kris Van Heuckelom (KU Leuven, Belgium)
- 09.30-10.30 Keynote: Robert Eaglestone (University of London, UK)
Chair: Vivian Liska
Postmodernism (and after) in Holocaust Literature: Global Contexts - 10.30-12.00 Navigating the Landscape of Contemporary Holocaust Literary Studies (session one)
Chair: Bettine Siertsema- Sławomir Jacek Żurek (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
Religious Topoi in the World of the Shoah in the 21st Century: Multilingual Perspectives - Rebekah Slodounik (Bucknell University, USA)
Unnatural Narrators in Fictional Holocaust Narratives: A Comparative Approach - Barbara Krasner (The College of New Jersey, USA)
Beyond Auschwitz: A New Interdisciplinary Framework for Twenty-First Century Children’s Holocaust Books
- Sławomir Jacek Żurek (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
- 12.00-13.30 Lunch break (only speakers and project team)
- 13.30-15.00 Holocaust Testimony, Memory and Post-Memory Through a Comparative Lens (session two)
Chair: Vivian Liska- Madelen Brovold (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway)
Comparative Perspectives on Transgenerational Memory Transmission in Norwegian and American Post-Generation Literature - Bryan Cheyette (University of Reading, UK)
Cynthia Ozick from Memory to Metaphor: Wiesel to Schulz - Frederik Van Dam (Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands)
Unarchiving Kafka: Paperwork in W.G. Sebald’s “Austerlitz” (2001) and Imre Kertész’s “Felszámolás” (2003)
- Madelen Brovold (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway)
- 15.00-15.30 Coffee break
- 15.30-17.30 Exploring Familial and Transgenerational Alliances in Contemporary Literature about the Holocaust (session three)
Chair: Sarah Minslow- Cayo Gamber (The George Washington University, USA)
Defamiliarizing the Familiar and Creating Testimonial Alliances in Children’s Literature about the Holocaust - Anna Kuchta (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Daughters of Postmemory. Family Relations and Holocaust Trauma Transmission in Autobiographical Works – A Comparative Perspective - Susan Jacobowitz (The City University of New York, USA)
On Beyond Maus: Graphic Collaborations, Holocaust Education and Social Justice
- Cayo Gamber (The George Washington University, USA)
- 17.30-18.30 Meeting with the French artist Thomas Duranteau, preceded by an introductory lecture by Kathleen Gyssels (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Chair: Kris Van Heuckelom
The Troubling Art of Thomas Duranteau: Shoah as Creative Input for a Mixed Spectatorship and Echoes to The Last of the Just (André Schwarz-Bart, 1959) - 18.30-19.30 Reception
Wednesday 28 June 2023 (Antwerp)
- 09.00-10.00 Keynote: Marina Balina (Illinois Wesleyan University, USA)
Chair: Vanessa Joosen
Melodramatic Impulse in Contemporary Young Adult (YA) Literature of Atrocity: Creating an Empathetic Reader - 10.00-11.30 Holocaust YA Literature Revisited (session four)
Chair: Barbara Irena Kalla- Bartłomiej Krupa (The Institute of Literary Research of The Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
Children in the Warsaw Ghetto (To Say Nothing of the Dogs): Spatiality and Human-canine Bonding in New Polish Children’s Holocaust Books - Lena Staskewitsch (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany)
Silence as a Means of Representation in Itself. The Framing of Silence in Children's Literature about the Holocaust - Elizabeth Weiden Philipbar (Gratz College, Melrose Park, US)
Reading Ravensbrück: Holocaust Literature in Secondary Education
- Bartłomiej Krupa (The Institute of Literary Research of The Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
- 11.30-12.00 Coffee break
- 12.00-13.00 Keynote: Zohar Shavit (University of Tel Aviv, Israel)
Chair: Michal Ben-Horin
Between Denial and Accountability – the Post-Wende German Narrative on the Holocaust - 13.00-14.30 Lunch break (only speakers and project team)
- 14.30-16.30 Anne Frank (and Beyond) (session five)
Chair: Marina Balina- Erga Heller (Kaye Academic College of Education, Israel)
“Where is Anne Frank”: Between Institutional Holocaust Post-Memory Adaptation, Historic Documentation, and Contemporary YA Romantic Novels - Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Transformations of Girls' Spaces in Times of War and Extermination. From the Holocaust to the War of 2022 - Pnina Rosenberg (Israel Institute of Technology, Israel)
The Diary of an Old Woman: Anne Frank's Resurrection in Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy (2013) - Avner Shavit (Wesleyan University, Connecticut, US)
Anne Frank's Legacy in the YA Genre – a Lionization or an Appropriation?
- Erga Heller (Kaye Academic College of Education, Israel)
- 16.30-17.00 Coffee break
- 17.00-18.00 Poetry and the Holocaust: New Multilingual and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (session six)
Chair: Sławomir Jacek Żurek- Michal Ben-Horin (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
A 21st-Century View: Rübner's Lamentation in German and Hebrew - Monica Tempian, Courtney McDonald (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
Transversal Threads. On the Translation of Bilingual Poetry by Holocaust Writer Manfred Winkler
- Michal Ben-Horin (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
- 18.00-19.00 Poetry reading: Piotr Florczyk (University of Washington, USA)
Chair: Kris Van Heuckelom
From the Annals of Krakow - 19.00-21.00 Conference dinner (only speakers and project team)
Thursday 29 June 2023 (Kazerne Dossin, Mechelen)
- 08.55-09.00 Welcome: Veerle Vanden Daelen (Kazerne Dossin)
- 09.00-10.00 Keynote: Przemysław Czapliński (University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poznan)
Chair: Bryan Cheyette
Discovering the Horror. The Holocaust in Polish Literature of the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries - 10.00-11.00 Framing the Holocaust in Post-Communist and Post-Soviet Spaces (session seven)
Chair: Kris Van Heuckelom- Yuliya Minkova (Virginia Tech, US)
Soviet or Jewish? The Misadventures of the Child Protagonists in Margarita Khemlin’s Novels - Anna Ronell (Tufts University, US)
Literary responses to the Holocaust in the Transnational Post-Soviet Spaces: Dina Rubina’s On the Sunny Side of the Street
- Yuliya Minkova (Virginia Tech, US)
- 11.00-11.30 Coffee break
- 11.30-13.00 Transmedializing the Holocaust Experience (session eight)
Chair: Daniel Feldman- Ekaterina Shatalova (University of Glasgow, UK)
Instagramming the Holocaust: Transmedia Adaptation of The Diary of Éva Heyman - Pieter Boulogne (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Don't Take It Nationally! Interslavic-Speaking Evildoers in Václav Marhoul’s Screen Adaptation of The Painted Bird (2019) - Dana Mihăilescu (University of Bucharest, Romania)
New Directions of Holocaust Representation via Solidarity and Self-Care in Collaborative Graphic Narratives between Artists and Child Survivors: On Charlotte Schallié’s But I Live 2022 Book Project
- Ekaterina Shatalova (University of Glasgow, UK)
- 13.00-15.00 Lunch break (only speakers and project team) and guided tour through the museum
- 15.00-17.00 New Interfaces of Memory: Technology, Films, Comics, Picture Books (session nine)
Chair: Kathleen Gyssels- Saloni Kumari, Preeti Bhatt (Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, India)
From Text to Film: A Comparative Study of the Novels When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971) and Caging Skies (2008) and Their Film Adaptations - Erin L. Smith (University of Minnesota, USA)
Chaos Memory: Remembrance and Erasure of the Holocaust in Marvel Comics and Films - Anna Foltyniak-Pękala (University of Bielsko-Biała, Poland)
The Holocaust on Social Media – Challenges of Literary Culture - Janneke van de Stadt (Williams College, USA)
Cats, Kinship, and Community in Picture Books about the Holocaust
- Saloni Kumari, Preeti Bhatt (Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, India)
- 17.00-17.30 Coffee break
- 17.30-19.00 Of Perpetrators and Victims (session ten)
Chair: Daniel Feldman- Joanna Krongold (University of Toronto, Canada)
‘If They Can Find a Reason to Hurt You, They Will’: Sexual Violence in Children’s and Young Adult Holocaust Literature - Bettine Siertsema (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
The Portrayal of the Perpetrator in 21st-Century Holocaust Literature - Jakub Strýček (Slezská univerzita v Opavě and Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Czech Republic)
The Prototype of the Perpetrator: Josef Mengele and His Representation in Czech and Slovak Literature after 1993. A Comparative Study
- Joanna Krongold (University of Toronto, Canada)
- 19.00-19.30 Concluding remarks