Although the Holocaust has long engaged writers in Canada – those with and without direct links to the historic event – their particular exploration of the subject has received little critical or scholarly attention. There now exists a significant body of Canadian Holocaust Literature that warrants such attention.

The aim of this landmark conference is twofold: to identify a corpus of work and to generate scholarly interest in the field. Proposals that focus on literary works originally written in Yiddish, Hebrew, English, or French are welcome. For the purposes of this conference, literary works include poetry, short fiction, novels, life writing, graphic narrative, and creative non-fiction. The theme of this inaugural conference is deliberately broad, and critical approaches may vary widely.Saturday evening will feature an opening panel discussion on Memoir as a Genre of Holocaust Literature at the Soloway Jewish, while the following day will feature a number of panels at Library and Archives Canada.

Admission is free for both events, but does require your registration on this page.

SATURDAY, 27 OCTOBER 2018

Location: Soloway Jewish Community Centre, 21 Nadolny Sachs Private

7:30-9:00 Opening Panel

Memoir as a Genre of Canadian Holocaust Literature: Reflections from the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program

Survivor author Nate Leipciger, managing editor Arielle Berger, and educator Stephanie Corazza reflect on the process of writing and producing Holocaust survivor memoirs and the ways in which this genre can serve as a foundation for Holocaust education.

Chair: Rebecca Margolis (University of Ottawa), conference co-organizer

SUNDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2018

Location: Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street

9:00 Welcome

9:15-10:15 Panel 1: Yiddish

Norman Ravvin (Concordia University), “‘Were I not to record it here there would be no trace’: Chava Rosenfarb’s ‘In the Boxcar’”
Goldie Morgentaler (University of Lethbridge), “Fiction versus ‘The Facts’: The Holocaust in Chava Rosenfarb’s Non-Fiction Essays”

Chair: Ruth Panofsky (Ryerson University), conference co-organizer

10:15-10:30 Break

10:30-11:30 Panel 2: Poetry

Tali Voron (Ryerson University), “Trauma and the Limitations of Language in the Poetry of Eli Mandel and Anne Michaels”
Natalia Vesselova (University of Ottawa), “‘The Past that Happened Somewhere Else’: Leonard Cohen’s Cognition of the Holocaust and ‘Survivor’s Guilt’”

Chair: Kaila Desjardins (University of Ottawa)

11:30-12:30 Panel 3: Prose

Brenda Beckman-Long (Briercrest College),“Creating a Community of Witnesses: Acts of Reading in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces”
Krishna Varma (English and Foreign Languages University), “The Ethics of the Face-to-Face Encounter: A Phenomenological Reading of David Sims’s Judenhass”

Chair: Jesse Toufexis (University of Ottawa)

12:30-1:30 Lunch (kosher/vegetarian served on site)

1:30-3:00 Panel 4: Comparing Genres

Emily Robins Sharpe (Keene State College), “Blood and Blues: Representing the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Fiction”
Joanna Krongold (University of Toronto), “Canadian Children’s Holocaust Literature: The Establishment of a Genre”
Richard Menkis (University of British Columbia) / Ronnie Tessler (Museum Consultant), “Inspiration, Mediation, and Representation: The Making of Colin Upton’s Kicking at the Darkness”

Chair: Stephanie Corazza (Azrieli Foundation)

3:00-3:15 Break

3:15-4:15 Panel 5: Memoir

Lesley Simpson (York University), “‘Reinhartz Family Architecture: The movement of memory”
Isa Milman (Victoria), “Poetry to Prose: A Memoir in Search of Family History”

Chair: Hernan Tessler-Mabé (University of Ottawa)

4:15-5:45 Panel 6: Graphic Memoir

Elaine Barron Mendelow (Florida Atlantic University), “Lost and Found in Postmemory: Bernice Eisenstein’s Journey in I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”
Ruth Panofsky (Ryerson University), “The ‘Nu’ World of Toronto in Bernice Eisenstein’s I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”
Lucas Wilson (Florida Atlantic University), “Traumatic Threads: Clothing as Postmemorial Inheritance in Bernice Eisenstein’s I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”

Chair: Seymour Mayne (University of Ottawa), conference co-organizer

5:45-6:30 Closing gathering (light refreshments)

Thank you to our co-sponsors: The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies; The Azrieli Foundation, Library and Archives, Canada; the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, CHES (Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship).

Canadian Holocaust Literature: Charting the Field

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