Leonard Wolinsky Lectures on Jewish Life and Education. The theme for the lectures this year is Anne Frank - 60 Years Since the Diary. The speakers are:  Professor Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University, "Anne Frank:  From Diary to Book," and Professor Edna Nahshon, Jewish Theological Seminary, "The Diary of Anne Frank:  From Page to Stage."  3 p.m., Robert R. McEwen Auditorium, Executive Learning Centre, Schulich School of Business.

The two presentations are based on chapters from the forthcoming collection, Anne Frank Unbound:  Media, Imagination, and Memory (Indiana University Press, fall 2012).

Jeffrey Shandler is Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University.  His books include Jews, God, and Videotape:  Religion and Media in America (2009), Adventures in Yiddishland:  Postvernacular Language and Culture (2005), Awakening Lives:  Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust (2002) and While America Watches:  Televising the Holocaust (1999), among other titles.  His forthcoming books include Anne Frank Unbound:  Media, Imagination, Memory (coedited, with Barbara-Krishenblatt-Gimblett, 2012).  Currently he serves as President of the Association for Jewish Studies.

Edna Nahshon is professor of Hebrew and Theater Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.  The recipient of prestigious academic awards, Nahshon is a recognized expert on the intersection of Jewishness and performance.  Her books include Yiddish Proletarian Theatre:  The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925-1940 (1998), From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot:  Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Plays (2005), Jews and Shoes (2008), Jewish Theatre:  A Global View (2009), Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context (April 2012), and the forthcoming Countering Shylock:  Jewish Responses to ‘The Merchant of Venice’.

Professor Henry Greenspan, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, "How Survivors Became Fashionable:  Holocaust Survivors in the American Imagination."  12 noon, 7th Fl. YRT, Rm. 764. 

Holocaust survivors moved from relative obscurity to near celebrity status in American popular consciousness inthe late 1970s.  Various explanations have been offered.  This talk will suggest that it is essential to consider a general preoccupation with disaster and surviving extremity that emerged as central themes in American popular culture forty years ago. It will also be argued that survivors' new visibility has not meant that their recounting has been more thoughtfully engaged.  A question for the group will be whether the phenomena described apply in Canada as well.

Henry Greenspan is a psychologist and playwright at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at Concordia University in Montreal.

Jewish Teacher Education Program Brunch'n Learn with guest speaker Dr. Ron Polster, "Blink:  Communication in Informal/Formal Jewish Education," 10:15 a.m.- 11:45 a.m., Winters Sr. Common Room, courtyard level. 

Malcolm Gladwell made famous the notion of Blink, of how, in a matter of milliseconds, in the "blink of an eye," communications happen.  This rings true in job interviews and in dating, and it certainly happens in educational settings, both informal and formal.  We will examine together how this is the case, and we'll consider examples from the world of experiential Jewish education and how they may have impact on classroom teaching - and vice versa.

Jewish Teacher Education Shabbaton/Retreat.  Scholar-in-residence:  Professor Belarie Hyman Zatzman, Dept. of Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University.  "Incorporating Theatre Arts Activities and Principles in the Classroom."

Professor Moshe Naor, Visiting Professor of Israel Studies with the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies will give a talk titled, "Israel After 1948:  Post-War Reconstruction and State Building," 2:30 p.m., 7th Floor, York Research Tower, Room 764.

Dr. Daniel Jütte, "The Jewish Leonardo?  A Sixteenth-Century Jewish Inventor and the Quest for the Secrets of Nature."  12 noon, 203 Bethune College.

This talk explores the story of Abramo Colorni, a late Renaissance Italian-Jewish inventor, alchemist and "professor of secrets."  Praised in his time as one of the most famous Italians alive, Colorni was admired by both Christian and Jewish contemporaries.  The talk will discuss how Colorni gained such fame and why he was coveted by major courts all over Europe.  Through the lens of Colorni's life it is possible to gain a new understanding of the role that Jews played in the early marketplace of secrets and science.

Dr. Jütte is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.  He studied history and musicology and received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg.  His main are of interest is early modern and modern European history.  In particular, his work has focused on the history of science, Jewish history, and music history.

POSTPONED TO LATER DATE.Jewish Teacher Education Program Brunch'n Learn with guest speaker Mr. David Gold, 10:15 a.m.- 11:45 a.m. Winters Sr. Common Room, courtyard level.  Mr. Gold was a young adolescent during WW II.  He survived the Holocaust years in hiding.  He will share his recollections and impressions with JTE students.

The Graduate Program in English and the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies present a panel discussion on "H.G. Adler's The Journey and the Literary Deictic."

Chair and Introduction:  Julia Creet, "Calling on Readers:  Deixis and the Reading Witness."

Peter Filkins, "Mapping the Forbidden:  Deictic Displacement in H.G. Adler's The Journey."

Amira Bojadzija-Dan, "Signs of Art Beyond Time:  Deixis in H.G. Adler's The Journey."

Bios:

Peter Filkins is a Professor in the Division of Languages & Literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock.  He is a poet and the translator of H.G. Adler's The Journey (1962, 2008) and more recently, Panorama (1968, 2011).  Filkins will be speaking about translation, with Israeli author Michal Govrin, interviewed by Julia Creet, at the International Festival of Authors on October 23, presented by the Koffler Centre for the Arts and York, Department of English.

Julia Creet is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at York and the co-editor (with Andreas Kitzmann) of Memory and Migration:  Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memory Studies.

Amira Bojadzija-Dan is a recent doctoral graduate of Social and Political Thought at York.  Her talk will be drawn from her dissertation entitled "Narratives of Sense Memory in Holocaust Survival Literature."

Professor Klaus Hoedl, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Graz, Austria.  "Jews of Viennese Popular Culture Around 1900."  3 p.m., 7th Floor, York Research Tower, room 764. 

Viennese Jews of the Fin-de-Siècle period are the topic of numerous books in Jewish studies.  The overwhelming majority of those books deal with Jews' contriubtions to 'high culture' and science.  A focus on personalities such as Signund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Arthur Schnitzler, Arnold Schöenberg, et. al. has led to the assumption that Jews contributed to intellectual cultural trends, and that they had no impact on popular and mass culture.

A closer look at the emergence of mass culture in Austra, however, reveals that Jews were very prominent as organizers, producers, and consumers.  In some fields they were even at the forefront of new trends.  Against this background, Jews closely interacted with non-Jews in the development of popular and mass culture; the former were not absent from this cultural terrain, but helped significantly in its formation.  This presentation  focuses on this role of Jews in Austrian popular culture.

Klaus Hoedl is a historian working at the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz, Austria.  He has published six books on East European Jews, the Jewish body, and Jewish identity.  He is a Fulbright scholar, has taught at various universities in Europe and in Jerusalem, and is currently working on Jews in popular culture.

Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies annual meeting and dinner, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.  Location TBA.  Guest speaker will be Professor Eric Lawee, Associate Director of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, "Rashi and Maimonides 'In the Estimation of the Generations':  The Case of Rashi's Resisting Readers."

Jewish Teacher Education Program annual opening meeting and dinner, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Vanier College, Senior Common Room, 010 Vanier College.