2023 Holocaust Memorial Lecture: "In the Haunted Present: Jews in a Non-Jewish World" featuring Dara Horn

Lecture Description: In her latest book, acclaimed author Dara Horn explores a pointed question: Why do far too many people seem to love dead Jews, but ignore the living ones? In 2023, the Holocaust continues to make headlines, fill our films and fiction, and generate extraordinary interest far beyond our community. Yet ignorance and indifference towards Jew-hatred today seems to be higher than ever. What's going on?

Speaker Bio: Dara Horn is the award-winning author of six books, including the novels In the Image (Norton 2002), The World to Come (Norton 2006), All Other Nights (Norton 2009), A Guide for the Perplexed (Norton 2013), and Eternal Life (Norton 2018), and the essay collection People Love Dead Jews (Norton 2021). One of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, she is the recipient of two National Jewish Book Awards, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Harold U. Ribalow Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, and she was a finalist for the JW Wingate Prize, the Simpson Family Literary Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books, Booklist’s Best 25 Books of the Decade, and San Francisco Chronicle's Best Books of the Year, and have been translated into eleven languages. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Jewish Review of Books, among many other publications, and she is a regular columnist for Tablet. Horn received her doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature from Harvard University. She has taught courses in these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College and Yeshiva University, and has held the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies at Harvard. She has lectured for audiences in hundreds of venues throughout North America, Israel and Australia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.

This lecture will be presented in person and also via Zoom. Please note that, in order to attend this event, you must reserve a seat ahead of time. We expect strong turnout for this event and will not be able to admit anyone who has not previously registered. The registration system will go live on Tuesday, 9/5, and free tickets are available on a first come first served basis.

Doors will open for this event beginning at 4:30pm. If you are attending in person, please give yourself plenty of time to arrive, pass through security, and be seated. Please also note that the following are prohibited at the Holocaust Memorial Lecture: purses, bags, and backpacks; coats and jackets; alcohol; smoking (including vapes); and photography and videography. A coat check will be available at check in.

Registration for this event will go live on the Cohen Center's website on September 5 and will close by September 26 (or sooner if tickets sell out).

This event is hosted by the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College as part of our 40th anniversary event series. Learn more about the anniversary here and please consider sponsoring our existing and emerging programs if you are able.

If you have any questions, please contact cohencenter@keene.edu. We look forward to seeing you in person or online for this exciting lecture!

This event is part of the Cohen Center calendar.