Fall 2017

MEMORY DREAMS: NEW ISRAELI VIDEO ART REFLECTS THE HOLOCAUST

SPEAKER: OLGA GERSHENSON, Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

With the generation of survivors dwindling, how can artists portray the Holocaust? What is appropriate? What are the limits of taste? This lecture introduces the work of young Israeli video artists and explores the way they engage with the Holocaust, or rather its memory, which in Israel is the cornerstone of national culture and identity. Their work is often playful, full of irony and humor, shifting points of view, and paradoxical connections between past and present.

THREE FLOORS UP: A TEL AVIV STORY

SPEAKER: ESHKOL NEVO, bestselling Israeli author.

Best-selling Israeli author Eshkol Nevo will speak about his new novel, Three Floors Up, in which a seemingly ordinary three-story building in Tel Aviv is the setting for exploring the grinding effects of the social and the political atmosphere on Israelis living their daily lives. Nevo uses the characters in his book, their flaws and their strengths, as a microcosm for Israeli society.

CONTEMPORARY WRITING IN ISRAEL: CAN YOU AVOID POLITICS

SPEAKER: ASSAF GAVRON, acclaimed Israeli author 

This lecture examines contemporary Israeli fiction and the role of politics within it. Does life in such a politically-charged environment influence the kind of fiction and other art forms created within it? What is the role of authors in such an environment? Are they expected to deal with it? Do they have an obligation to do so? Or is it perhaps a burden that they are not allowed to escape from? Through a series of examples and case studies, from his own and his peers’ experience, Gavron shows how contemporary Israeli writers deal with these and other questions, both in their fiction and beyond it.