The last three decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in both
Jewish-German relations and German Jewish literary and cultural history. Within
the United States, growing numbers of course offerings, conference panels (e.g. at
the Conferences of German Studies Association [GSA] and the Association for Jewish
Studies [AJS]), the founding in 2009 of the biennial Duke University-Carolina
Conference on German Jewish Studies and, more recently, its biennial periodical
Nexus as well as many other publications, academic and otherwise (books, journal
articles and special issues, conference volumes, popular histories, films, etc.) attest
to the growth of interest.
In Germany and Austria, one finds at both the popular and academic levels a
perhaps even more intense growth of interest attested to by the founding of the
Jewish Museum in Berlin, one of the most visited museums in all of Germany, the not
always unproblematic fascination with Klezmer Music, film festivals, “Offene Tage
der Synagoge” in major cities, as well as the many publications, both scholarly and
popular, and various other cultural events throughout both countries. Similarly, the
number of universities and institutes focusing on this subject has grown noticeably
in the last three decades or so—with the founding of the Hochschule für Jüdische
Studien in Heidelberg in the 1979, the Simon-Dubnow-Institut für jüdische Geschichte
und Kultur at the University of Leipzig in 1995, the Centrum für Jüdische Studien in
Graz in 2000-01, and, in 2011-12, the inter-university Zentrum für Jüdische Studien
in Berlin, involving all the Berlin-area universities. Such institutes exist alongside
and complement the older, more established institutes for Judaistik and Jüdische
Geschichte in places like the Freie Universität Berlin, the Universität Wien or in
Hamburg. In so doing, they attest to the widening horizon of interest in “Jewish
Studies” across a range of disciplines—from History, Religion and Literary Studies
to Art History, Film, Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Memory Studies, and beyond.
The purpose of this workshop is to introduce some of the key areas of this
scholarship and popular interest, to help participants gain a greater sense of the
breadth and depth of these fields, the richness of German Jewish culture and past,
the complexities of Jewish-German relations today, and the contemporary relevance
this subject has in Germany and Austria.
Program Agenda
9:00
Registration and Coffee
9:30-10:15
Asher Biemann, "Das Italienbild der deutschen Juden"
10:15-11:00
Joel Rubin, “Klezmer-Musik im Nachkriegsdeutschland”
11:00 - 11:15
Coffee Break
11:15-12:00
Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, “Landscapes of Memory: Places and Cultures of Holocaust Memory in Post-War Germany”
12:15-1:00
Jeffrey Grossman, “Die Unentrinnbarkeit von Erinnerung: Juden in Deutschland und Österreich heute”
1:00-2:00
Lunch
2:00-3:00
Round-Table Discussion
Faculty
Asher Biemann
Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, and former Director of Program in Jewish Studies, University of Virginia
Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich
Visiting Assistant Professor, German Program of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages, University of Mary Washington
Jeffrey Grossman
Associate Professor of German, University of Virginia
Joel Rubin
Associate Professor, Director of Music Performance, McIntire of Music, University of Virginia