Registration for the following event can be found at this link.
Memory Wars and Memory Work: Relational Remembrance in Pınar Öğrenci's Aşît [The Avalanche]
During the last few years, a series of acrimonious debates has taken place in Germany about Holocaust memory, antisemitism, and Israel/Palestine. In one of the most visible of those disputes, an enormous scandal rocked the 2022 Documenta 15 international art exhibit in Kassel. Set against the backdrop of Documenta, this lecture will review the recent memory wars in Germany and then turn to a work that was displayed at Documenta but was not part of the controversy swirling around the exhibit: Pınar Öğrenci's film Aşît [The Avalanche]. This film, which concerns the tangled histories of violence directed against Armenians and Kurds in a remote town in eastern Turkey, does not address the terms of the German debate directly. However, as Rothberg will argue, in weaving together multiple histories of exile, trauma, and catastrophe, Aşît offers a mode of relational remembrance that suggests alternative possibilities for coming to terms with the past in contemporary Germany—and beyond.
Following his lecture, Prof. Rothberg will be joined in conversation by Prof. Sonali Thakkar of NYU, whose work focuses on postcolonial literature and theory and anticolonial thought and politics. A reception will conclude the evening.
This event is free and open to the public. Please register to reserve your spot.
Prof. Michael Rothberg is Chair of the UCLA Department of Comparative Literature, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies. Prof. Rothberg is the author of three influential books: The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (2019), Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), and Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000).
Each year the annual Mosse Lecture, presented by the Columbia Department of Germanic Languages, seeks to honor the legacy of the progressive Mosse publishing house founded by Rudolf Mosse, which helped to shape the democratic public sphere during the German Weimar Republic. Descendants of the Mosse Family include Prof. George L Mosse, the acclaimed historian of fascism, Dr. Hilde L. Mosse, a distinguished child psychiatrist who worked with Harlem children suffering from reading disabilities, Hans Strauch, an accomplished architect, and Roger Strauch, a successful high technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Hans and Roger co-lead The Mosse Foundation's efforts to sustain and promote the Mosse Family's philanthropic legacy to support distinguished educational, research, health, and arts institutions and progressive causes.
This event is cosponsored by Heyman Fellows Program, The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, The Columbia Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, The University Seminar on Cultural Memory, Columbia University European Institute, and the Columbia Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.
