NEW MEMBER OF THE ACADEMIC COUNCIL
Welcome to the newest member of the Wyman Institute’s Academic Council, Prof. Sonja Wentling. Sonja earned her Magister der Philosophie at the University of Vienna, Austria, her M.A. at Southern Illinois University, and her Ph.D. at Kent State University. She is Associate Professor in the History Department at Concordia College in Minnesota, where she teaches American Foreign Relations with a special focus on Jewish history and the Middle East. She has published numerous scholarly essays on U.S. foreign policy, American Zionism, and U.S. policy toward Polish Jewry during the Hoover era.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
FEBRUARY 2, 2011: Wyman Institute Arts & Letters Council member Prof. Thane Rosenbaum (Fordham U. School of Law) will chair a panel discussion on “The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry: Pivotal Figures from a Heroic Era,” at the 92nd Street Y on February 2, 2011, at 8:00 pm. The panel will feature Natan Sharansky, Richard Perle, actress Margarita Levieva, and journalist Gal Beckerman. For tickets, call 212-415-5500 (and give code JF20 to get a 20% discount) or visit www.92Y.org/Jewry
MARCH 24, 2011: Arts & Letters Council member Pierre Sauvage will make the opening presentation at the Columbia University conference on Jewish Rescue in France and the Empire during World War II, on March 24, 2011. He will present and discuss footage from his work-in-progress And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille, as well as the new short Three Righteous Christians of France and new testimony concerning the rescue effort in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France.
BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND HONORS:
1. Mazel tov to Wyman Institure Arts & Letters Council chair Cynthia Ozick, winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 2010 National Jewish Book Awards by the Jewish Book Council. Cynthia’s new novel, “Foreign Bodies” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), has been earning rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review called it “superb,” “absorbing,” “witty,” and “fierce.” In addition, Cynthia and Thane Rosenbaum were among the eight Jewish notables who contributed to a recent symposium in the New York Jewish Week, “Jews in the Crosshairs: From Riverdale to Chicago.” Cynthia’s new novel, “Foreign Bodies” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), has been earning rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review called it “superb,” “absorbing,” “witty,” and “fierce.”
2. The Museum of the History of Polish Jewry (whose North American division is chaired by Wyman Institue board member Sigmund Rolat) is preparing a Polish language version of “Messenger from Hell,” the animated short about Jan Karski which was recently created by the Wyman Institute and Disney’s Educational Division.
3. Cambridge University Press has just issued a paperback edition of the critically-acclaimed book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, by Academic Council member Prof. Stephen Norwood (U. of Oklahoma). He will be lecturing about the book at Yale University and New York University this spring.
4. Academic Council member Prof. Alan L. Berger (Florida Atlantic U.) wrote an essay, “Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Asventures of Kavalier & Clay: The Return of the Golem,” for Studies in American Jewish Literature, vol 29, 2010. Prof. Berger served as guest editor of “Bellow and the Holocaust,” a special issue of the Saul Bellow Journal (Fall, 2010) and participated in “Blinded by Ideology: Saul Bellow and the Partisan Review,” a discussion with Gregory Bellow in that issue.
5. Academic Council member Prof. Steven T. Katz (Boston U.) was elected Academic Advisor to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF), sponsored by the European Union. Prof. Katz will serve as the Shapiro Senior Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for the academic year 2010-2011.
6. Academic Council member Prof. Zev Garber, professor emeritus of Jewish Studies at LAVC, has been recently recognized in Hebrew Studies, the Journal of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew, which published several essays on the critical contributions he has made to the field of Jewish Studies. Entitled “A Symposium on the Work of Zev Garber: Reviews of Maven in Blue Jeans”, the essays were originally presented at a joint session meeting of the Western Jewish Studies Association and the American academy of religion- Western regional on March 14, 2010. This symposium analyzed Garber’s work in relation to the 2009 book, Maven in Blue Jeans: A Festschrift in Honor of Zev Garber, a collection of essays honoring him, and includes a response from Zev Garber. To read the collection of writings on Zev Garber in the latest issue of Jewish Studies, visit http://vanhise.lss.wisc.edu/
7. The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture (edited by Prof. Judith Baskin), which includes an essay by Dr. Rafael Medoff about America’s response to the Holocaust, is scheduled for publication in July 2011.
8. Academic Council member Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker (Bar Ilan U.) authored an essay, “American Refugee Policy in the 1930s,” in the book Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States, ed. by Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (Berghahn Books, 2010). She gave a paper about saving children from Nazi persecution at an international conference in Salzburg in September 2010.
9. Academic Council member Prof. Marc Lee Raphael (William & Mary College) took 22 W&M students to Prague last summer to study “The Holocaust in Czechoslovakia” for seven weeks. The course, “The Holocaust in Czechoslovakia,” met at Charles University four days a week, followed by weekend field trips to Terezin, Auschwitz, the Holocaust memorial in Vienna, the Lidice museum, and elsewhere.