Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism

Please join us for a conversation to celebrate the publication of Ruth Franklin’s new book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank.

Ruth Franklin’s latest book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2025. Her previous book, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (2016), won numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016, a Time magazine top nonfiction book of 2016, and a “best book of 2016” by The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, and others. She is also the author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (2011), which was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Writing. Her criticism and essays appear in many publications, including the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and Harper’s. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in biography, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Leon Levy Fellowship in biography, and the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism.

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The Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires have had a strikingly similar relationship with the modern state. Sunni and Catholic authorities experienced three major shocks and displacements—religious reformation, the rise of the nation-state, and mass migration — which shaped how each religion would come to experience the state’s political jurisdiction. Whereas early Christianity and Islam were characterized by missionary expansion, religious institutions forged in the modern era are primarily defensive in nature. They respond to the simple but overlooked imperative to adapt to political defeat while fighting off ideological challenges to their spiritual authority. This talk will discuss the historical path towards choosing transnational spiritual leadership over temporal political authority.

Jonathan Laurence is Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy. A specialist in comparative politics, Professor Laurence’s scholarship focuses on politics and religion in Western Europe, Turkey, and North Africa. He is the co-author of Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (2006) and the author of The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims: The State’s Role in Minority Integration (2012) and Coping with Defeat: Islam, Catholicism, and the Modern State (2021). Outside of the academy, Professor Laurence is a prolific and respected analyst. During his stint at the Brookings Institution (2008-2018), he addressed lawmakers on Capitol Hill, briefed diplomats, led a team of analysts at the State Department, and served on the Foreign Policy committee of two presidential campaigns. His research and commentary on international affairs have been featured on CNN and in the Washington Post, and he has published essays in the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Wall Street Journal.

Zoom Webinar
Poster

As a Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi was a powerful voice for testimony and for reflections on the ethical consequences of the genocide. But he was also, especially in his first work, If This Is a Man, a careful analyst of the material conditions of camp life, including the workings of economy and labor. This talk examines Levi’s account of labor in Auschwitz-III, and in particular the uses and meanings of the language of slavery in that context.

Robert Gordon is Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Cambridge. He works on the literature, cinema, and cultural history of modern Italy. He is the author or editor of several volumes on the work of Primo Levi (e.g., Primo Levi’s Ordinary Virtues; Auschwitz Report; The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi; Innesti; Primo Levi magico) and a major study of the wider field of postwar cultural responses to the Holocaust (The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010). He coedited the collection Holocaust Intersections and a special issue of the Jewish history journal Quest. He is also author of a recent work of comparative cultural criticism on the role and function of luck in modern storytelling, Modern Luck.

Cosponsored by the Department of Italian Studies

Poster

A panel organized around Michael Rothberg’s work The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (2021)

MODERATOR:
Carolyn J. Dean, Professor of History and French at Yale

PANELISTS:

Robin Celikates, Professor for Practical and Social Philosophy at Freie Universität, Berlin
Kaiama L. Glover, Professor of African American Studies and French at Yale
Jill Jarvis, Assistant Professor of French at Yale
Joshua Leifer, Department of History at Yale and author of Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life
Michael Rothberg is Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies at UCLA

Poster

BOOK TALK WITH MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

A book talk with music performance: Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.

Sebastian Ruth is named one of the 25 most influential people in the string world by Strings Magazine. Ruth is the founder of Community MusicWorks, an organization that connects professional musicians with urban youth in Providence.

Jeremy Eichler is an award-winning writer, scholar, and music critic who serves as chief classical music critic of the Boston Globe. Time’s Echo was named History Book of the Year by the Sunday Times.

Co-sponsored by Public Humanities and Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism

Poster