"Shanghailanders" Jewish Refugees in China Exhibit at the Sabes: A Journey of Hope for more than 18,000 Jews

Through May 7
Sabes JCC
4330 S. Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis
Exhibit open Mon-Thu, 7:30am-9:30pm; Fri, 7:30am-6:00pm; and Sun, 8:00am-3:00pm (closed Saturdays).


Jewish Refugees in Shanghai (1933-1941) is a collaborative community effort to share information about the unique experiences of Jewish refugees in Shanghai during World War II. The cornerstone of this project is a historical exhibit curated by the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum. The exhibit has been enhanced with additional stories from four "Shanghailanders" with deep Minnesota connections.
See the CHGS website for a narrative of Jewish refugee Susan Muller, who journeyed from Vienna to Shanghai to Toronto.
Sponsored by: Confucius Institute at the University of Minnesota, Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and Sabes JCC.
Additional support from the Jewish Community Center of the Greater St. Paul Area, and University of Minnesota partners the Center for Jewish Studies, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

HGMV Workshop: "An Upheaval of Memory: The Collision of Dutch Resistance Literature and National History"

Thursday, March 26, 3:00pm
Social Sciences 710
Jazmine Contreras
"An Upheaval of Memory: The Collision of Dutch Resistance Literature and National History"




This paper examines the Dutch experience of German occupation during World War II through the use of memoirs. These memoirs, written by individuals with firsthand experiences of the occupation, shed light upon the categories of victim, bystander, and collaborator, which tend to be overemphasized when discussing wartime activity. Part of the paper is dedicated to problematizing these categories, especially when they obfuscate wartime experiences that do not fit neatly within the narratives created by the Dutch government. The second half of the paper, examines the memoirs in the context of government narratives which state that the Dutch were simultaneously heroes and victims during the occupation. Despite the explicit overgeneralization of this narrative, its power over Dutch memory of WWII has not diminished. Within academic circles, historians and social scientists alike have debated how to characterize the efforts of the Dutch population in light of the deportation of a majority of the Jewish population. The government has also shied away from engaging with this reality and the rampant anti-Semitism that took place after liberation.

Jazmine is a second year PhD student in the History Department at the University of Minnesota. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality in the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II, specifically fraternization between German soldiers and Dutch women.

"Despite The Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Life In Germany After 1945"

Please join us for Andrea Sinn's talk "Despite The Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Life In Germany After 1945."

She will discuss the experiences of Jewish communities in postwar Germany and the process of redefining Jewish existence in "the land of the perpetrators." The competing and conflicting German, Jewish, and international conceptions of Jewish life in Germany that were voiced during the early postwar years play an important role in understanding the development of individual Jewish communities in the Federal Republic and the position that German-Jewish organizations occupy within Germany and the Jewish community in Europe today.

Despite The Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Life In Germany After 1945
Wednesday, March 25 at 5:00 pm
135 Nicholson Hall



Andrea Sinn is the DAAD Professor of German & History at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research and teaching focus on modern European history especially German, Jewish, and migration history. She has published widely on German-Jewish experiences during the Nazi-Dictatorship, personal and collective challenges of exile and return, as well as the rebuilding of Jewish life in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Sponsors:
Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch
Center for Jewish Studies
Center for German & European Studies

April 10, "A Usable Body: Coaxing the Body Into and Out of Captivity at Black History Museums"

Friday, April 10
12:15 PM - 1:30 PM
1114 Social Sciences
*Free*
RSVP REQUIRED to marydrew@umn.edu

Sociology Workshop Series Presents:

Robyn Autry, Wesleyan University
"A Usable Body: Coaxing the Body Into and Out of Captivity at Black History Museums"





The visual logic of 'black' identity as a social and historical fact is visible at museum exhibitions depicting the transformation of enslaved Africans to racial citizens. In particular, Professor Autry will focus on the work of the body in narrating this transition at the first black history museum: the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan. She identifies two types of body work: that of the historical object on display - the captive African and the US citizen - along with that of the visitor moving through the physical space of the museum. In the first instance, she considers the visual treatment of the enslaved body in captivity as broken, bowed, beaten and often nude in contrast to the post-abolition period when the body is positioned as erect, individuated, self-possessed and always clothed (even as its body ironically disappears in the process of becoming a subject). During both periods, normative presentations of the body mimic the moral underpinnings of black history as a site of knowledge production and identity.
Building on this, Professor Autry considers how the visitor's body is oriented both to the narratives on display and to the built environment of the museum itself. Just as the transition from slavery to citizenship is materialized through images of poised, able bodies, she argues that the museum works to construct visitors as similarly poised and able-bodied subjects. These problematic around subject-object relations illustrate that spectatorship cannot be divorced from the racialized imagination that produces and then privileges certain forms of embodied subjecthood over others.

On view at the WAM: Selections from the Struggle series by artist raised in Hungary in WWII

Selections from the Struggle series
SATURDAY, FEB 14 2015 - SUNDAY, MAR 22 2015
Weisman Art Museum

Peter Dallos: Selections from The Struggle series is concerned with two elemental conflicts that affect humankind: one struggle is the tension between Western civilization and the forces of nihilism and anarchy, the other is environmental destruction versus the reaction of the wounded earth.

Peter Dallos's early work (the War series) was autobiographical, mostly concerning his World War II experiences as a child during the German occupation, the bombardment and siege of Budapest, and the Holocaust. The entire War series is in the permanent collection of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.



Dallos is a self-taught artist and John Evans Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at Northwestern University. As a young teenager, he studied painting in Budapest with György Kádár, one of Hungary's foremost artists. He also learned there the machining and tool and die-making skills that form the mechanical foundation of these works.
Dallos's adolescence was spent under the Hungarian fascist regime and later under the Soviet occupation. He escaped and immigrated to the United States after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

International Symposium: Social Memories and Human Rights in Post-Communist Europe (March 4-6)

The international symposium coordinated by the IAS collaborative, Reframing Mass Violence, examined the dynamics of public remembrance in post-communist Europe. The keynote address was by John-Paul Himka, Professor of History and Classics, University of Alberta. In case you missed it, or would like to review, links to videos below.

March 4, Wednesday
Keynote Address: "Bringing the Dark Past to Light:
The Reception of the Holocaust in Post-Communist Europe"
John-Paul Himka
7:30 p.m.
Best Buy Theater, Northrop
Welcome: Barbara Frey (Co-Chair of IAS Collaborative)
Introduction: Evelyn Davidheiser (University of Minnesota)

Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Professor Himka discusses recent political, social, and cultural developments that have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust and the role that memory plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe.

March 5, Thursday
Location: 1210 Heller Hall, 271 19th Avenue S, Minneapolis

9:00 - 9:30 AM
Welcome and Introductory Remarks
CLA Dean John Coleman
Alejandro Baer (Co-Chair of IAS Collaborative)

9:30 - 11:30 AM
Session 1: Competing Images of the Past: Stalinism vs. Nazism
Lars Breuer (Free University of Berlin): "Victimhood in Vernacular Memory in Germany and Poland"
Matti Jutila (University of Minnesota): "Constructing Genocidal Marxism in Post-Communist Europe"
Respondent: Alejandro Baer (University of Minnesota)

1:30 - 3:30 PM
Session 2: Accounting for the Past: Truth and Justice in the former Yugoslavia
Sarah Wagner (George Washington University): "Recognizing Srebrenica's Missing: The Sociopolitics of Forensic Intervention"
Jelena Subotic (Georgia State University): "The Mythologizing of Communist Violence"
Thomas C. Wolfe (University of Minnesota): "History, Truth, and Method: Comments on Forensics and Justice"
Respondent: Barbara Frey (University of Minnesota)
4:00 - 5:45 PM
Session 3: The Ukraine Conflict: Contested Past, Contested Present
An IAS "Thursdays at Four" event
John-Paul Himka (University of Alberta): "The History behind the Regional Conflict in Ukraine"
George O. Liber (University of Alabama - Birmingham): "The Ukrainian Revolution of 2013-2015 and the Russian Response."
J. Brian Atwood (University of Minnesota): "The US perspective on the Regional Conflict."
Respondent: Mary Curtin (University of Minnesota)

March 6, Friday
Location: 1210 Heller Hall, 271 19th Avenue S, Minneapolis

9:00 - 11:00 AM
Session 4: Law and Memory in Transition
Ryan Moltz (University of Minnesota): "Lustration in the Former Yugoslavia"
Adam Czarnota (IISL, Spain): "Law as Mnemosyne Married with Lethe: Quasi-judicial institutions and collective memories"
Nadya Nedelsky (Macalester College): "The Struggle for the Memory of the Nation: Slovakia's Confrontation with its Competing Pasts"
Respondent: Joachim Savelsberg (Co-Chair of IAS Collaborative)
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Session 5: The Arts and the Politics of Representation
Michal Kobialka (University of Minnesota): "Of Contested Pasts and Contested Presents: Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre and the Politics of Representation"
Margarita Kompelmakher (University of Minnesota): "Universality from the Margin? Performing the Explicit Body in the Belarus Free Theater's Trash Cuisine"
Respondent: James Dawes (Macalester College)
Sponsored by the Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute for Global Studies, Center for Austrian Studies, Department of Political Science, Department of History, Center for Jewish Studies, European Studies Consortium and the Ohanessian Endowment Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation.

Violent Action and Body Knowledge: A Sociological Perspective on Torture

"Violent Action and Body Knowledge:
A Sociological Perspective on Torture"
Tuesday, March 10, 4pm
1114 Social Sciences
CHGS Lecture, co-sponsored with the Department of Sociology and the Human Rights Program

Katharina Inhetveen
Sociology Chair, Siegen University, Germany

The lecture will explore torture, as a case of systematized violent action, using analytical instruments informed by the sociology of the body and the sociology of knowledge. The focus is on relations between torture practices and body knowledge. It is argued that the differences as well as the similarities between specific cases of torture, treated in a comparative perspective, can be better understood by taking into account not only the actual torture practices themselves, but also their interconnectedness with body knowledge and body images as socio-cultural constructions. Professor Inhetveen will discuss how violent action and body knowledge mutually influence, shape and reshape each other.