Over the past three decades, the study of Holocaust literature has become an academic sub-discipline in its own right. In view of the global proliferation of (as well as new threats to) Holocaust memory, this multilateral project addresses the cultural, sociological and biographical diversity of positions occupied by contemporary – Jewish and non-Jewish – writers engaging with the Shoah. In spatial terms, the project is organised around an East-West axis that encompasses three major (German, Russian and English) and three minor languages (Polish, Dutch and Hebrew) and six corresponding geographical areas (Germany, Russia, the US, Poland, the Low Countries and Israel). In adopting the first quarter of the 21st century as its primary time frame, the project offers an integrated comparatist framework that seeks to reconcile the time-and-place specificity of Holocaust representation and the simultaneous circulation of certain literary tropes, genres and strategies across and beyond linguistic and national borders.
The consortium members are the Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp), the International Centre for Research of the History and Cultural Heritage of the Central and Eastern European Jews (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland), and the Faculty of Jewish Studies (Bar-Ilan University, Israel).
Click here to visit the consortium website.