Shires to present ‘The Holocaust in Contemporary Culture: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry,’ Oct. 27

The Syracuse University School of Education’s Regional Holocaust and Genocide Initiative will host a seminar titled “The Holocaust in Contemporary Culture: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry” featuring Linda M. Shires, at 4 p.m. at the Winnick Center on SU’s campus on Oct. 27. The seminar is free and open to the public, and free parking will be available in the University Avenue Garage. Call the School of Education at (315) 443-4696 to reserve a space.

Representations of the Holocaust in our culture are more prominent than ever. In this seminar, Shires will guide attendees through the genres of film, painting, arts installations, literature, music and the creation of memorials, monuments and museums in many countries to experience these representations. With fascinating and sharply focused examples, Shires will look at relationships among poetry, painting, memorials and architecture in order to highlight central themes and interdisciplinary connections in the arts. The seminar will also explore several ways of remembering and memorializing the Holocaust.

Shires will also address different generations’ responses to the Holocaust, particularly the relationship between humor and the Holocaust, by referencing the graphic novel “Maus” and popular films such as “Life is Beautiful” and “Inglorious Basterds.”

Shires is a former visiting professor at Princeton University, and professor and chair of the English department at Stern College, Yeshiva University, New York. She has taught two NEH seminars for school teachers, is currently teaching the Holocaust to New Jersey teachers through Princeton’s Teachers as Scholars Program in Education, and has received teaching awards from SU, where she taught Holocaust Representation, among other topics, for many years. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she has authored books and articles on 19th- and 20th-century poetry, narrative theory and Victorian fiction. Her latest book is “Perspectives: Modes of Viewing and Knowing in 19th Century England” (2010).

The Regional Holocaust and Genocide Initiative: Resistance, Resilience and Responsibility, is a Chancellor’s Leadership Project that seeks to enhance education, cultural production, and public memory about the incidence of genocide—past and present. Faculty and student participants conduct curriculum research and develop coursework for grades K-6, and implement existing curriculum in grades 7-12. Additional support is provided by the Spector/Warren Fellowship, which prepares SU students to teach about the Holocaust and genocide, and the Ziering family, which recently made a gift to SU to support a professional development certificate in Holocaust and genocide education for New York state in-service teachers. Music, visual and dramatic arts events, including collaborations with SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, broaden the project beyond the curriculum into public dialogues on law, justice and ethics.