“Rethinking Memory, Culture and Extreme Violence: The Holocaust and Colonialism in Fiction and Film” Maxime Silverman
Thursday, April 9, 2015
125 McKenzie Hall
4:30pm
Silverman is Professor of Modern French Studies in the
School of Languages, Cultures and Societies
University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Maxime Silverman specializes in post-Holocaust cultures in France, in colonial and postcolonial theories and cultures, as well as in questions of trauma, memory, race and violence as they reverberate in literature and film. He is one of very few scholars working to align Jewish and post-Colonial studies in French and to seek to understand how their attitudes toward “Frenchness” are aligned. While questions of identity and national belonging in France are shared by survivors both of the Shoah and of French colonial policies, the concerns of these groups do not often come into dialogue. Indeed, they are sometimes played against each other. Silverman specializes in the study of interactions among memories and behaviors related to multiple experiences of trauma, loss, and violence.