Intergenerational Trauma, Memory, and Stories Carried Forward

How is trauma transmitted across generations and how do descendants of Holocaust survivors and other atrocities remember these events? Join Dr. Marianne Hirsch for a discussion about intergenerational trauma and memory. Dr. Hirsch coined the term “postmemory” to describe how descendants of Holocaust survivors experienced the trauma of their forebears. Using the lenses of visual culture and gender, Dr. Hirsch will reveal how intergenerational trauma plays a role in the stories and memories that are carried forward and remembered. Dr. Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Dr. Marianne Hirsch is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Hirsch’s work combines feminist theory with memory studies, particularly the transmission of memories of violence across generations. Some of Hirsch's publications include: The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (2012), Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, co-authored with Leo Spitzer (2010), Rites of Return: Diaspora, Poetics and the Politics of Memory, co-edited with Nancy K. Miller (2011), School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, co-authored with Leo Spitzer (2020), the co-edited volumes Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography (2020), and Women Mobilizing Memory (2019). She was born in Romania and educated at Brown University where she received her BA/MA and Ph.D. degrees.

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This event is hosted by the Nancy and David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center in Cincinnati and is presented in partnership with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota; the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College; Jewish Family Service of Cincinnati; the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage; and the Taft Health Humanities Research Group.