"How Survivors Became Fashionable:  Holocaust Survivors in the American Imagination" 

Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 12:00 pm
York Research Tower (YTR), Room 764, York University

Professor Henry Greenspan, the 2011-2012 Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at Concordia University, will be in Toronto to speak at York University.  

Holocaust survivors moved from relative obscurity to near celebrity status in American popular consciousness in the 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.

In addition to being a Fulbright scholar, Henry Greenspan is a psychologist and playwright at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. 

If you are interested in attending this event, you are encouraged to rsvp to  cjs@yorku.ca .