One-Day Symposium May 24, 2001 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Helena Rubinstein Auditorium

For several decades, literary scholars in North America, Europe, and Israel have engaged in a discussion about the value and importance of employing fiction and poetry in reflections upon the Holocaust. Many of the issues central to this ongoing dialogue remain hotly debated, including the ways in which the history and memory of the Holocaust are transmitted in literature; the public reception of those transmissions; the relationship between oral testimony and literature; and the potentially therapeutic value of using literature to confront the emotional trauma left behind after the genocide. This program is a unique opportunity to hear from 12 leading academics and literary critics whose work examines and analyzes literary treatments of the Holocaust.

"Literature is obliged, by its own inner laws, to seek out details, and from them, and only from them, to present some truth."
-- Aharon Appelfeld, Beyond Despair (1994)