If You Build It, They Will Come

Event information
Start:
End:
Venue:FIU Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Graham Center, Room 243

This symposium explores some recent trends in Polish and European memory culture, in which the Jewish past has become part of the non-Jewish national patrimony. In the case of Krakow, Poland, where only a handful of Jews remains, non-Jewish cultural entrepreneurs are actively recreating a “Jewish” presence through cafés and a world-class annual summer cultural festival. The symposium interprets this phenomenon in terms of demographic shifts currently underway throughout much of Europe.

FIU faculty will participate in the symposium as discussants. Jack Kugelmass is Professor of Anthropology and the Sam Melton Professor and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He received a B.A. from McGill University, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research. He is the editor of Jews, Sports and the Rites of Citizenship (Illinois, 2006), Key Texts in American Jewish Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2003); author of The Miracle of Intervale Avenue: The Story of a Jewish Congregation in the South Bronx (Columbia University Press, 1996), and co-author of From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (Indiana University Press, 1998).

The event is free and open to the public. To RSVP and for more information, call 305-348-5949 or email calyc@fiu.edu.