U of A presents two engaging lectures as part of fall 2022 Jewish Studies Week: Nov. 14 and 15

(ANNews) – Jewish Studies Week at the University of Alberta in Edmonton is presenting two exceptional lectures – an in-person event on November 14 with guest speaker Melanie Carina Schmoll and a zoom webinar featuring Justin Cammy at the annual Toby and Saul Reichert Holocaust Lecture on November 15.

On Monday, November 14 at 2 pm MST Research Fellow Melanie Carina Schmoll, PhD. will present a lecture on “Learning from the past? Holocaust Education and its impact on antisemitism.” The in-person lecture will cover important global information and relate it to what is happening here in Alberta. It will take place at the Senate Chamber, in Arts & Convocation Hall.

Intolerance and anti-Semitism have not died out in the world, and current numbers of antisemitic incidents are worrying. For some, teaching the Holocaust is about nothing less than learning from history and to prevent genocides. Holocaust Education mostly takes place in state schools, since they serve as society´s central location for memory and learning. But are Albertan teachers and educators prepared enough to carry the burden?

Melanie Carina Schmoll, Phd, is research fellow at Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research, Bar Ilan University, Israel, editor and author. She is a Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Schmoll received her doctorate from the University of Hamburg, Germany. She holds a MA ́s and BA ́s degree in the fields of Political Science, History and Philosophy. Her main research focuses on Israel, specifically security issues and Holocaust Education.

Dr. Schmoll speaks frequently in the US, Canada and Israel. Over the course of her career, she held the position as lecturer at the University of Hamburg and the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, Germany and Adjunct Associate Professor at Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

Her talks cover topics like: antisemitism, Holocaust Education, education policy and tools as well as aspects of remembrance and memory. Dr. Schmoll develops educational material for teachers and educators on various topics. She works as an author, editor, advisor, expert and reviewer on school textbooks, online learning platforms and encyclopedias.

The Annual Toby & Saul Reichert Holocaust Lecture with keynote speaker Justin Cammy, will take place via live zoom webinar on Tuesday, November 15 at 5 pm MST. The topic will be “From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Yiddish Poetry and Witnessing.” A question and answer session will follow the lecture.

Why was the only memoir of the world’s most famous Yiddish poet written out of collective memory until very recently? And what can we learn about the beginning of Holocaust history through a memoir first written in Moscow in 1944? In this talk, 2022 Canadian Jewish Literary Award recipient Justin Cammy introduces us to the literary and political challenges of translating Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto as he guides us back into a time and place where Yiddish defined and interpreted the world.

Justin Cammy is a literary and cultural historian with research and teaching interests in Yiddish literature, Eastern European Jewish cultural history, and contemporary Israel. He is chair of both the Program in World Literatures and the Program in Jewish Studies, director of the Translation Studies Concentration, faculty co-director of STRIDE (Student Research in Departments), and Secretary to the Faculty. He also is a long-time member and advisor in the Programs in Middle Eastern Studies and Russian and East European Studies.

Cammy’s publications range from essays on Yiddish literary history to scholarly translations of historical texts to introductions to new editions of works by Yiddish writers and memoirists. He is a leading authority on the writers of the interwar literary group Yung-Vilne (Young Vilna). His critical edition of Abraham Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg won the 2022 Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award.

Cammy has served as resident research fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan (winter 2020), translation fellow at the Yiddish Book Center (2018), resident research fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (2014), and Mellon Senior Scholar on the Holocaust and visiting professor of English at UCLA (2009). He is a longtime faculty member of the Steiner Yiddish summer program at the Yiddish Book Center and the Naomi Prawer Kadar International Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University (for which he also has served as on-site director since 2019).

Cammy is an associate editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History and sits on the academic advisory boards of both the Jonah Goldrich Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture at Tel Aviv University (where he was a senior fellow in 2013-14, 2018-22) and the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies at UMass-Amherst.

To register for the Toby & Saul Reichert Holocaust Lecture click ualberta.ca/wirth-institute.