During the spring semester 2018, Uta Larkey was invited to give a talk at Hebrew University. The talk examined the missing commemoration of the brutal expulsion of Polish Jews from Nazi Germany in October 1938 as well as the existence of hundreds of thousands Jewish displaced persons in Germa
n after WWII. Dr. Larkey discussed why these two historical events and developments have hardly played any role in the otherwise rich and considerate Memorial Culture in Germany. The talk was well received, and triggered a rich discussion.
Category Archives: Faculty News
Dr. Uta Larkey introduces “Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs” at Baltimore Jewish Film Festival
On April 25, Uta Larkey introduced Hannas schlafende Hunde (Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs) at the 29th Baltimore Jewish Film Festival. The festival is one of North America’s longest running celebrations of Jewish-themed movies, presenting internationally renowned films of Jewish interest, many of them Baltimore and Maryland premieres.The festival ran this year from March 19 to April 30.
Uta Larkey introduces the film “Hannas schlafende Hunde” (Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs) at the Baltimore Jewish Film Festival, April 25, 2017.
The movie, Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs (Austria/Germany, 2016) is based on the novel by Elisabeth Escher of the same title, and the film was directed by the Austrian director Andreas Gruber. The film centers on the story of nine-year old Johanna who is growing up in the 1960s as a good Catholic girl in a provincial Austrian town. When her blind grandmother Ruth tells her the secret about their Jewish past, the “sleeping dogs” of the family history awake. But unlike her traumatized mother, Johanna doesn’t want to hide. To show her pride in her family heritage, Johanna changes her name to Hanna. After the screening, Dr. Larkey and Gary Meliker from the Baltimore Jewish Film Festival led a discussion about the film.
Trailer: Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs
The novel “Hannas schlafende Hunde” was published in 2010 by Elisabeth Escher.
Talk by Dr. Larkey at the JDC (Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) in New York
On October 12, Dr. Larkey gave a talk at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in New York City. Her talk was titled Collecting Memory/Narrating Horror: Early Post-WWII Testimonies by Jewish Displaced Persons in the U.S. Zone.
For this talk, she presented testimonies gathered by the Central Historical Commission (Tsentrale Historishe Komisye) in Munich. The Commission was charged with collecting individual stories of survival and bearing witness and chronicling the histories of destroyed Jewish communities. Her research questions concerned the treatment of subjective testimonies as historical documents, the use of languages and linguistic choices by survivors from multilingual prewar Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the specificity of ways in which eyewitness accounts were collected and narrated.
Dr. Larkey presented at the Center for Jewish Culture in Leipzig – August 2015
Dr. Uta Larkey’s talk “Mehrfach gefährdet: Polnische Juden in Leipzig vor und nach der Polenaktion 1938” (Under Multiple Threats: Polish Jews in Leipzig and the Polenaktion of 1938) argues that the mass expulsion of Polish Jews in October 1938 was the first unprecedented, vicious act against Jews in Nazi Germany. The focus on the deportations from Saxony/Germany to the German-Polish border through interviews, testimonies, letters and historical documents highlights the brutal deportation of Polish Jews to the “green border” between Germany and Poland. The talk also details the direct connection between the expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany (Polenaktion) and the November pogrom (Kristallnacht). The talk was co-sponsored by the Polish Institute in Leipzig.
Lecture by Antje Krüger at the University of Georgia
In May 2014, Antje Krüger was invited to a symposium in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Georgia. The symposium was titled “Triangular Readings in German Literature and Culture.” It aimed at the development of scholarship on the role of the Third in German literature and culture as well as on triangulation as a method of inquiry in literary scholarship. The meeting brought together scholars, both junior and senior, from North America and Europe whose areas of expertise range from medieval to 21st-century German literature and culture. Antje Krüger’s lecture was titled “Das Un-erhörte Erzählen”: Uwe Timm’s Poetics of Daily Life” and investigated third position in Uwe Timm’s works. See here for more information
Antje Krüger and Justine Ruhlin (’15) presented at NeMLA
On April 6th, Antje Krüger and Justine Ruhlin (’15) presented a paper at the annual convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association in Harrisburg. They participated in a panel that addressed questions of how to teach GDR History to American Undergraduates. The paper was the first co-authored conference presentation by a professor and student!
See here for more information on the conference
Uta Larkey at the University of Florida
Uta Larkey and Barbara Mennel, Associate Professor in the Germanic Studies section of LLC and in the English Department.
Uta Larkey gave a talk at the University of Florida about her current research. The talk addressed life in Jewish DP camps in Germany between 1946 and 1950. The talk was co-sponsored by German Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and by the Norman and Irma Braman Chair in Holocaust Studies.
Uta Larkey presented “Triumph over Hitler: Jewish Life in Germany today”
Uta Larkey presented the talk “Triumph over Hitler: Jewish Life in Germany today” on March 20th for the Baltimore Chapter of the Brandeis National Committee.
Lecture by Uta Larkey at the University of Arizona
Uta Larkey presented on March 7th 2014 in the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona. Her talk was titled: “Traces of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in German Feature Films.”