Events

Past Event

Politics of Memory: Anti-semitism in Contemporary Western Europe

January 31, 2024
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
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East Gallery, Maison Française, Buell Hall

A Roundtable discussion with Fabien Théofilakis, Stefanos Geroulanos, Gil Hochberg, Mark Mazower, and Andrew Port

This roundtable will explore the contemporary politics of anti-semitism in western Europe in historical perspective. Focusing on the cases of postwar France and Germany, discussants will ask how a set of debates that emerged out of consideration of the Holocaust have been transformed in recent years and affected most recently by events in the Middle East. 

The discussants are Stefanos Geroulanos, Gil Hochberg, Andrew Port and Fabien Theofilakis. The discussion will be moderated by Mark Mazower.

Participant Profiles:

Stefanos Geroulanos is Professor of European Intellectual History and Director of the Remarque Institute at NYU where he teaches modern European intellectual history, specialising in France. His latest book is The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and our Obsession with Human Origins (2024, forthcoming).

Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies and the Chair of MESAAS at Columbia, and on the executive committee of the Center of Palestine Studies (CPS). Her books include In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist ImaginationVisual Occupations: Vision and Visibility in a Conflict Zone and Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future.

Mark Mazower is SNF Director of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination and Ira D. Wallach Professor of History, Columbia. His books include Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (2008) and What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home (2017).

Andrew Port is Professor of History at Wayne State University and author of the widely acclaimed Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust (2023) described by Samuel Moyn as 'the most important study of memory, politics, and the ongoing construction of public norms written in a long time.'

Fabien Théofilakis is Professor of History at Paris-1, Sorbonne, and the author of numerous publications on wartime captivity and camps in the Second World War, the Eichmann trial and the memory of the Holocaust.  He is the Alliance Visiting Professor at Columbia in Spring 2024.

This event is sponsored by the Maison Francaise, the Alliance Program, and the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and co-sponsored by the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Department of History.