Program
SUNDAY, APRIL 10th
5:30 – 7:30 pm Author Reading and Discussion with Olga Tokarczuk
Venue: Regents Hall, Lewis Tower, 16th Floor, Loyola University
Opening Event: Literary reading and conversation with Olga Tokarczuk,
2015 Nike-award winning author of Księgi Jakubowe / The Books of Jacob
MONDAY, APRIL 11th
9:00 – 9:30 am Breakfast and Coffee at Daley Library, UIC Campus
9:30 – 9:45 Welcome Remarks from the Organizers
9:45 – 11:30 PANEL 1 – Re-Imagining POLIN
“Yiddishland”,“Borderlands”, “Polin” and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in Contemporary Discourse / Post-National, Transnational and Postcolonial Approaches
Marcin Wodziński, University of Wrocław, POLIN Museum
Krzystof Czyżewski, Borderlands Foundation, Sejny
Karolina Szymaniak, ŻIH, Warsaw and University of Wrocław
Eugenia Prokop-Janiec, Jagiellonian University
11:30 – 12:15 Exhibition Opening: Jewish/Polish Avant-Gardes
Introduction by the curator, Jarosław Suchan, Łódź Museum of Art
Discussants: Karolina Szymaniak (ŻIH) and Agnieszka Jeżyk (UIC)
1:45 – 3:15 KEYNOTE I – Andrzej Leder, University of Warsaw
“Dream-State Revolution: The Shoah, (Non)Memory, and the Social Unconsciousness of the Polish Middle Class”
Discussant: Michał Paweł Markowski, UIC
3:15 – 4:30 PANEL 2: Ethnography of Wounded Places
Roma Sendyka, Jagiellonian University. Memorial Landscapes of Dispersed Holocaust: from Amnesia to Non-Memory.
Konrad Matyjaszek, Polish Academy of Science. Spaces of monologue: territorial delimitations of contemporary Polish Jewish studies.
Malgorzata Bakalarz-Duverger, New School for Social Research. Owning Wounded Places: Jewish Communal Property in Contemporary Southeast Poland – Case Studies.
Discussant: Erica Lehrer, Concordia Chair: Richard Levy (UIC)
4:45 – 6:30 PANEL 3: Jewish/Polish Spaces of Encounter
Marc Caplan, UM Frankel Institute. A Disenchanted Elijah: Folklore, Conspiracy Theories, and Allegory in S. Ansky’s Destruction of Galicia
Natalia Aleksiun, Touro College, GSJS. Female, Jewish and Educated: Jewish Women at Universities in the Second Polish Republic.
Karen Auerbach, UNC. Jewish Booksellers and their Salons as Locales for Jewish-Catholic Sociability in 19th Century Poland.
Beth Holmgren, Duke University.
Discussant: Bożena Shallcross, University of Chicago Chair: Keely Stauter-Halsted (UIC)
8:00 – 9:30 FILM SHOWING: “Raise the Roof” with Laura & Rick Brown
Venue: UIC Theater School, Lecture Hall
“Raise the Roof” – The Handshouse Gwoździec Synagogue Project
Film showing followed by a panel discussion with special guests:
Laura and Rick Brown, creators of the Handshouse Project,
with Irene Kronhill Pletka and Agnieszka Rudzinska
TUESDAY, APRIL 12
9:00 – 9:30 Breakfast & Coffee at Daley Library, UIC Campus
9:30 – 11:15 PANEL 4: Jewish Revival and Nationalism: Key Tropes &
Open Questions
Roundtable Discussion led by Geneviève Zubrzycki, University of Michigan.
Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Princeton University. Polishness in Practice: A Language without Grammar.
Anna Bikont. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Irena Sendler.
Shana Penn, Berkeley Theological Union, UJ. Of Jews and Genders: Mixing Metaphors in Discourses of Prejudice.
Jessie Labov, Ohio State University. The Central European “Jewish Revival”: Polish and Hungarian Negotiations of Jewish Cultural Memory since the 1980s.
11:15 – 12:30 Keynote II: Kenneth Moss, Johns Hopkins University
“Polish Jewish Political Culture in the Shadow of a Polish Jewish Condition: Renegotiating Minorityhood, Diaspora, Zionism, and Home in the 1930s”
1:45 – 3:30 PANEL 5: Doikeyt and Diaspora Nationalism in Politics and
Literature
Sam Kassow, Trinity College. Polish Jews, Know Your Land: Landekentenish in the 1930’s.
Mikhail Krutikov, UM Ann Arbor. Belarus in Yiddish Modernist Poetry.
Michael Steinlauf, Gratz College. “Jews of All Lands and Peoples, Unite!…” Y.L. Peretz & Diaspora Nationalism.
Karen Underhill, UIC. Zeitlin, Sutzkever, Roth: Narratives of Leavetaking and Return.
Discussant: Andrzej Brylak, UIC
3:30 – 4:00 Coffee Break @ Daley Library
4:00 – 5:30 PANEL 6: Reconsidering Diaspora and Diasporisms
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION led by Jonathan Brent, Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Julie Cooper, Tel Aviv University. A Diasporic Critique of Diasporism.
Daniel Kahn, Songwriter, Translator, Actor; Director, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin.Subversive Song Smuggling and Universal Golus.
Anita Norich, University of Michigan. Yiddish Translation Matters.
Nancy Sinkoff, Rutgers University. How to Make Diasporas Meet: Pedagogical Approaches.
Andrzej Brylak, UIC. Exiled in the Promised Land. Marek Hłasko’s Israeli Writings.
Organized by
Host: Karen Underhill, Slavic & Baltic Languages & Literatures, UIC
Irena Grudzińska -Gross, Slavic Languages & Literatures, Princeton University
Jessie Labov, Slavic & East European Languages & Cultures, Ohio State University
Geneviève Zubrzycki, Dept. of Sociology, Copernicus Program in Polish Studies, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Bożena Nowicka-McLees, Polish Studies Program, Loyola University Chicago
Agnieszka Rudzińska, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw
Sponsored by
Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw • Sigmund Rolat • The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture • The Jan Karski Educational Fund • Andrzej Rojek • Copernicus Program in Polish Studies, University of Michigan • UIC Fund for Polish Jewish Studies • Loyola University Program in Polish Studies • Stefan & Lucy Hejna Fund, UIC • School of Literatures, Culture Studies & Linguistics, UIC • Chicago YIVO Society • UIC Program in Jewish Studies • YIVO Institute for Jewish Research • UIC Institute for the Humanities • UIC Richard J. Daley Library