Jewish Women's Voices Seminar: Touching Photographs/Prompting Postmemories: A Conversation with Scholar Marianne Hirsch and Artist Sara Davidmann
Please note that this form is for in-person registration only. If you would like to join online, please use this link
3 June 2025
2:00-5:00pm
The Buttery, Wolfson College
Part of the Vera Fine-Grodzinski Programme for Jewish Women’s Voices
In this seminar, Marianne Hirsch and Sara Davidmann will reflect on the very different ways the family photographs they inherited have shaped their work on family and cultural memory.
What do photographs from the European Jewish world before the Holocaust tell us about Jewish life and how the legacies of its destruction have shaped subsequent generations?
How do photographs carry memory? How do they prompt our own postmemories?
The discussion will be based on Hirsch’s autobiographical and theoretical writing and Davidmann’s artistic practice.
The conversation will be followed by a coffee break and an optional workshop on Memory and Photography facilitated by the two speakers. Attendees are invited to bring one photograph and think about the stories it has enabled.
Speaker Details:
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Combining memoir, literature and photography, she writes about the transmission of memories of violent histories across generations, a process she has termed “postmemory.” Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, and School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, both co-authored with Leo Spitzer, as well as the co-edited volume Women Mobilizing Memory. She is currently working on a book about reparative memory.
Sara Davidmann is a multi award-winning artist living and working in London. For over a decade (2011- ) Sara’s work has focused on her family history. Sara’s work has been exhibited in Canada, Australia, Germany, France, India and the United Kingdom, and was the focus of three events at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Publications include three photography monographs. Sara has also published book chapters and journal articles contextualising her artwork, and she regularly gives artist’s talks. She has received numerous awards for her work including a Philip Leverhulme Prize, a Fulbright Hays Scholarship, four Arts and Humanities Research Council awards and an Association of Commonwealth Universities Fellowship. Sara has a PhD in Photography (practice-based) from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Further Details and Contacts:
This hybrid event is free and open to all; however, registration is required.
This event will be recorded and made available soon after on the OCLW website.
Registration will close at 10:30 on 3 June 2025.
Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
Please note that this form is for in-person registration only. If you would like to join online, please use this link
3 June 2025
2:00-5:00pm
The Buttery, Wolfson College
Part of the Vera Fine-Grodzinski Programme for Jewish Women’s Voices
In this seminar, Marianne Hirsch and Sara Davidmann will reflect on the very different ways the family photographs they inherited have shaped their work on family and cultural memory.
What do photographs from the European Jewish world before the Holocaust tell us about Jewish life and how the legacies of its destruction have shaped subsequent generations?
How do photographs carry memory? How do they prompt our own postmemories?
The discussion will be based on Hirsch’s autobiographical and theoretical writing and Davidmann’s artistic practice.
The conversation will be followed by a coffee break and an optional workshop on Memory and Photography facilitated by the two speakers. Attendees are invited to bring one photograph and think about the stories it has enabled.
Speaker Details:
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Combining memoir, literature and photography, she writes about the transmission of memories of violent histories across generations, a process she has termed “postmemory.” Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, and School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, both co-authored with Leo Spitzer, as well as the co-edited volume Women Mobilizing Memory. She is currently working on a book about reparative memory.
Sara Davidmann is a multi award-winning artist living and working in London. For over a decade (2011- ) Sara’s work has focused on her family history. Sara’s work has been exhibited in Canada, Australia, Germany, France, India and the United Kingdom, and was the focus of three events at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Publications include three photography monographs. Sara has also published book chapters and journal articles contextualising her artwork, and she regularly gives artist’s talks. She has received numerous awards for her work including a Philip Leverhulme Prize, a Fulbright Hays Scholarship, four Arts and Humanities Research Council awards and an Association of Commonwealth Universities Fellowship. Sara has a PhD in Photography (practice-based) from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Further Details and Contacts:
This hybrid event is free and open to all; however, registration is required.
This event will be recorded and made available soon after on the OCLW website.
Registration will close at 10:30 on 3 June 2025.
Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
Please note that this form is for in-person registration only. If you would like to join online, please use this link
3 June 2025
2:00-5:00pm
The Buttery, Wolfson College
Part of the Vera Fine-Grodzinski Programme for Jewish Women’s Voices
In this seminar, Marianne Hirsch and Sara Davidmann will reflect on the very different ways the family photographs they inherited have shaped their work on family and cultural memory.
What do photographs from the European Jewish world before the Holocaust tell us about Jewish life and how the legacies of its destruction have shaped subsequent generations?
How do photographs carry memory? How do they prompt our own postmemories?
The discussion will be based on Hirsch’s autobiographical and theoretical writing and Davidmann’s artistic practice.
The conversation will be followed by a coffee break and an optional workshop on Memory and Photography facilitated by the two speakers. Attendees are invited to bring one photograph and think about the stories it has enabled.
Speaker Details:
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Combining memoir, literature and photography, she writes about the transmission of memories of violent histories across generations, a process she has termed “postmemory.” Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, and School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, both co-authored with Leo Spitzer, as well as the co-edited volume Women Mobilizing Memory. She is currently working on a book about reparative memory.
Sara Davidmann is a multi award-winning artist living and working in London. For over a decade (2011- ) Sara’s work has focused on her family history. Sara’s work has been exhibited in Canada, Australia, Germany, France, India and the United Kingdom, and was the focus of three events at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Publications include three photography monographs. Sara has also published book chapters and journal articles contextualising her artwork, and she regularly gives artist’s talks. She has received numerous awards for her work including a Philip Leverhulme Prize, a Fulbright Hays Scholarship, four Arts and Humanities Research Council awards and an Association of Commonwealth Universities Fellowship. Sara has a PhD in Photography (practice-based) from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Further Details and Contacts:
This hybrid event is free and open to all; however, registration is required.
This event will be recorded and made available soon after on the OCLW website.
Registration will close at 10:30 on 3 June 2025.
Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.