With Michael Rothberg
How can scholars weigh in on the crisis of our moment? What are the risks? How can writers navigate the challenge of using academic knowledge in public settings?
Following the Humanities Without Boundaries event with Michael Rothberg on Thursday, Oct. 9 (Historical Analogy and the Politics of Holocaust Memory), we invite faculty, staff, and graduate students to attend a small-group discussion on writing about charged political issues. We’ll consider strategies and methods and explore the challenges, rewards, and process of writing about complex and potentially divisive issues, whether for academic audiences or public consumption. The workshop will be moderated by Danielle Weindling, Assistant Director, Center for the Humanities.
Space is limited and registration is required. To join, please send an email to rsvp@humanities.wisc.edu with your name and affiliation. Light refreshments will be provided.
Upon registration, we will share an advance reading, “Universal Values”, from Michael Rothberg that was published in the London Review of Books. The suggested reading will help ground the Public Works discussion.
Michael Rothberg (1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles) researches the social and cultural implications of political violence and its afterlives. His books include The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (2019), and Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000). The 2021 German translation of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), prompted a national debate about the relationship between the Holocaust and colonialism. His current work on comparison controversies grows out of that experience.