James Young, professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will present the Carleton College Forkosh Family Lecture in Judaic Studies on Tuesday, April 5 at 8 p.m. in the Severance Great Hall. Entitled “Stages of Memory in Berlin and New York: From History to the Monument,” his presentation is free and open to the public. A reception follows Young’s lecture.
Young is the author of “At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporaty Art and Architecture” (Yale University Press, 2000); “The Texture of Memory” (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994; and “Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust” (Indiana University Press, 1988), winner of a Choice Outstanding Book Award in 1988.
His articles, reviews, and Op-Ed essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Book Review, and Op-Ed pages, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Forward, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among other newspapers, as well as in scholarly journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, New Literary History, Partisan Review, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Annales, SAQ, History and Theory, Harvard Design Magazine, Jewish Social Studies, Contemporary Literature, History and Memory, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Prooftexts, The Jewish Quarterly, Tikkun, and Slate, among dozens of other journals and collected volumes. His books and articles have been published in German, French, Hebrew, Japanese, and Swedish editions.
Young was also the Guest Curator of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City, entitled "The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History" (March - August 1994, with venues in Berlin and Munich, September 1994 - June 1995) and was the editor of The Art of Memory (Prestel Verlag, 1994), the exhibition catalogue for this show.
Young is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, ACLS Fellowship, NEH Exhibition planning, implementation, and research grants, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Grants, an American Philosophical Society Grant, and a Yad Hanadiv Fellowship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, among others.
In 2000, he was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, a ten-volume anthology of primary sources, documents, texts, and images, forthcoming with Yale University Press. At present, he is completing an insider’s story of the World Trade Center Memorial, entitled The Stages of Memory at Ground Zero: A Juror’s Report on the World Trade Center Site Memorial.
Young is Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he has taught since 1988, and currently Chair of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. He has also taught at New York University as a Dorot Professor of English and Hebrew/Judaic Studies (1984-88), at Bryn Mawr College in the History of Religion, and at the University of Washington, Harvard University, and Princeton University as a visiting professor. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California in 1983.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Religion. Severance Great Hall is located off College Street on the Carleton College campus in Northfield. For more information, contact Louis Newman, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies & Director of Judaic Studies, at (507) 222-4224.
