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March 19, 2024
  • In Person: QUEER NEWARK: BOOK TALK Newark Public Library

    March 19, 2024 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
    James Brown African American Room 5 Washington Street Newark, NJ 07102

    Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community
    A Book Discussion Sponsored by the Newark Public Library and the Rutgers-Newark Departments of History and Africana Studies

    Tuesday, March 19, 2024
    6:00 PM
    Main Library
    James Brown African American Room
    5 Washington Street
    Newark, NJ 07102

    More info here: 

    https://www.npl.org/queer-newark-book-talk/

    Queer Newark charts a history in which working-class people of color are the central actors and in which violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire.

    Editor Whitney Strub will be joined by contributors Aaron Frazier, Dominique Rocker, and Peter Savastano to discuss their book.

    Light refreshments will be served.

    Click here for the flier.

March 20, 2024
  • IN PERSON: An Evening with Dr. Elizabeth White and Dr. Joanna Sliwa

    March 20, 2024 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
    265 Aragon Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33134, USA

    Books & Books and Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach present…

    AN EVENING WITH DR. ELIZABETH WHITE & DR. JOANNA SLIWA

    discussing

    The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust

    (Simon & Schuster, $28.99)

    Wednesday, March 20th, 7:00 PM | Books & Books, Coral Gables

    RSVP HERE FOR FREE


    Books & Books is thrilled to present an evening with Dr. Elizabeth White and Dr. Joanna Sliwa for their extraordinary book: The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust (Simon & Schuster, $28.99).

    Dr. Joanna Sliwa is the author of Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust
    (Rutgers University Press).

    This event is FREE and open to the public and books will be available for purchase the night of the event! Please RSVP only if you intend to join us.


    About the Book:

    The astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir.

    World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, unknown story of “Countess Janina Suchodolska,” a Jewish woman who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Poland’s Nazi occupiers.

    Mehlberg operated in Lublin, Poland, headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, the SS operation that murdered 1.7 million Jews in occupied Poland. Using the identity papers of a Polish aristocrat, she worked as a welfare official while also serving in the Polish resistance. With guile, cajolery, and steely persistence, the “Countess” persuaded SS officials to release thousands of Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp. She won permission to deliver food and medicine—even decorated Christmas trees—for thousands more of the camp’s prisoners. At the same time, she personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters imprisoned at Majdanek, where 63,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits. Incredibly, she eluded detection, and ultimately survived the war and emigrated to the US.

    Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg’s sometimes harrowing personal testimony with broader historical narrative. Like The Light of DaysSchindler’s List, and Irena’s ChildrenThe Counterfeit Countess is an unforgettable account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

    BUY THE BOOK HERE


    About the Authors:

    Dr. Elizabeth “Barry” White recently retired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she served as historian and as Research Director for the USHMM’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide. Prior to working for the USHMM, Barry spent a career at the US Department of Justice working on investigations and prosecutions of Nazi criminals and other human rights violators. She served as deputy director and chief historian of the Office of Special Investigations and as deputy chief and chief historian of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. She lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

    Dr. Joanna Sliwa is a historian at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) in New York, where she also administers academic programs. She previously worked at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. She has taught Holocaust and Jewish history at Kean University and at Rutgers University and has served as a historical consultant and researcher, including for the PBS film In the Name of Their Mothers: The Story of Irena Sendler. Her first book, Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust won the 2020 Ernst Fraenkel Prize awarded by the Wiener Holocaust Library. She lives in Linden, New Jersey.

March 22, 2024
  • "Photo-Attractions" Virtual Book Talk with Ajay Sinha

    March 22, 2024 @ 9:00 am - 10:30 am

    The illustrated talk presents a rare, undocumented exchange between the arts and cultures of India and the U.S.A. found in a set of over one hundred unpublished black and white photographs of the Indian classical dancer Ram Gopal. Taken in New York City in 1938 by an American photographer named Carl Van Vechten, the large-format images show Ram Gopal assuming a variety of dance poses wearing fantastical costumes, while the photographer changes the studio lighting and fabric backgrounds for full views, mid-shots and close-ups. The images not only show the photographer's view of the gorgeous dancer, but also the dancer's manipulation of the camera. Interpersonal desires and cultural fantasies of the two men spark a surprising conversation between photography and choreography. Drawing on his recent book, Photo-Attractions: An Indian dancer, an American photographer, and a German Camera (Newark, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2023), art historian Ajay Sinha explores the stunning visual record of the photoshoot, and builds a story of layered interactions.

    Free Online Public Book Discussion on Zoom Platform

    March 22, 2024

    Register here: 
    https://www.jp-india.org/programmes/between-the-visual-and-performing-arts

March 26, 2024
  • HYBRID: Politicizing Islam in Austria. On Far-Right Success in the Twenty-First Century

    March 26, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
    Mandel Reading Room 303, Mandel Center for Humanities, Brandeis University

    Tues., March 26, 2024
    12:00 - 1:30 pm ET (US)
    Hybrid In-Person and Zoom Webinar
    Mandel Reading Room 303, Mandel Center for Humanities, Brandeis University

    RSVP FOR IN-PERSON

    RSZP FOR ZOOM WEBINAR

    **A light lunch will be provided for in-person attendees**

    About the Event

    Orange and teal book coverThis talk discusses how the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) adapted anti-Muslim discourse to their political purposes and how that discourse was then appropriated by the conservative center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) to explain the anti-Muslim swerve in Austrian politics, preparing the way for a right-wing coalition government between conservatives and far-right actors that would subsequently institutionalize anti-Muslim political demands and change the shape of the civic conditions and public perceptions of Islam and the Muslim community in a country that had has stood out for its longstanding state recognition of the Muslim community as early as 1912.

    About the Speaker

    Since 2021, Farid Hafez has been the Class of 1955 Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College. He is a political scientist, who studied in Vienna and worked at the University of Salzburg from 2014 to 2021. Hafez has more than 150 academic publications.

March 27, 2024
  • Popular Culture Association conference

    March 27, 2024 - March 30, 2024 @ 
    Chicago, IL, USA

March 28, 2024
  • Popular Culture Association conference

    March 27, 2024 - March 30, 2024 @ 
    Chicago, IL, USA

March 29, 2024
  • Popular Culture Association conference

    March 27, 2024 - March 30, 2024 @ 
    Chicago, IL, USA

March 30, 2024
  • Popular Culture Association conference

    March 27, 2024 - March 30, 2024 @ 
    Chicago, IL, USA

April 4, 2024
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference

    April 4, 2024 - April 7, 2024 @ 
    Toronto, ON, Canada

April 5, 2024
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference

    April 4, 2024 - April 7, 2024 @ 
    Toronto, ON, Canada

April 6, 2024
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference

    April 4, 2024 - April 7, 2024 @ 
    Toronto, ON, Canada

  • The Shared Origins of Modern Comics with Eike Exner

    April 6, 2024 @ 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
    2002 North Main Street Santa Ana, CA 92706

    Presented by Eike Exner, a historian and translator of Japanese comics. His book Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History received the 2022 Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Exner’s book will be available for purchase in the Gallery Store and a book signing will follow the lecture!

    The phrase ‘Asian comics’ is sometimes used in opposition to ‘Western comics.’ But are comics from different parts of the world fundamentally different from each other? Using ample visual evidence from Japan, China, and Korea, this lecture will show how in the 1920s comics swept the globe more or less simultaneously. The modern comic strip, in which characters are able to use speech balloons to converse across scenes consisting of multiple, sequential images, had appeared in the United States around 1900 in close connection with new audiovisual technologies such as motion pictures and sound recording. Alongside Hollywood movies, Columbia records, and other consumer products such as Quaker Oats, Kodak cameras, and Johnny Walker whiskey, comics then spread to East Asian metropolises like Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul, where the form was enthusiastically received and adopted by local artists.

    NORMA KERSHAW AUDITORIUM | LECTURE & BOOK SIGNING

    Ticketed Onsite Event: Members $15 | General $20

    Recorded Online Screening: Members $5 | General $10 | Online version will be emailed to ticketholders one week after the onsite event.

    PURCHASE RECORDED SCREENING

    PURCHASE ONSITE TICKETS

    Questions? Email programs@bowers.org or call 714.567.3677. Proceeds benefit Bowers Museum Education Programs. Tickets are non-refundable.

April 7, 2024
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference

    April 4, 2024 - April 7, 2024 @ 
    Toronto, ON, Canada

April 11, 2024
  • American Educational Research Association conference

    April 11, 2024 - April 14, 2024 @ 
    Philadelphia, PA, USA

April 12, 2024
  • American Educational Research Association conference

    April 11, 2024 - April 14, 2024 @ 
    Philadelphia, PA, USA

April 13, 2024
  • American Educational Research Association conference

    April 11, 2024 - April 14, 2024 @ 
    Philadelphia, PA, USA

April 14, 2024
  • American Educational Research Association conference

    April 11, 2024 - April 14, 2024 @ 
    Philadelphia, PA, USA

April 17, 2024
  • Latino/a/x Studies Association conference

    April 17, 2024 - April 20, 2024 @ 
    Tempe, AZ, USA

April 18, 2024
  • Latino/a/x Studies Association conference

    April 17, 2024 - April 20, 2024 @ 
    Tempe, AZ, USA