Holocaust focus of DSCC festival

The Messenger 02.20.08

Community members can gain new perspectives on the Holocaust this month through the 17th annual book festival presented by Dyersburg State Community College.
The festival will be held Monday through Feb. 29 in the DSCC Learning Resource Center on the Dyersburg campus.
Two scholars with national reputations in Holocaust studies will be the featured speakers. The festival also will include a screening and discussion of the film “Transported Lives,” a documentary about 14 Memphians who survived the Holocaust.
Zsuzsanna Ozsvath, the Leah and Paul Lewis chair in Holocaust Studies and a professor of literature and the history of ideas in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, will give three talks: “Personal Stories About How Christians Reacted to the Holocaust,” “Survivor: A Child’s Story of Living Through the Holocaust in Hungary” and a “Literary History of the Holocaust.”
David Patterson, the Bornblum Chair of Excellence in Judaic Studies and the director of the Bornblum Judaic Studies Program at the University of Memphis, also will give four addresses: “Jewish Christian Issues and Relations After the Holocaust,” “Open Wounds: Religious and Philosophical Challenges of the Holocaust for the Jewish People,” “Survivor Diaries and Open Wounds” and “Critical Reflections: Before, During, and After the Holocaust.”
In addition, DSCC psychology faculty members Dr. Erskine Ausbrooks and Jeannine McMahon will discuss “Did Psychological Theories Change After the Holocaust?” and DSCC associate professor of English Dr. William Northcutt will present “A Critical Examination of Novels and Graphic Novels About the Holocaust.”
Area residents were also invited to participate in the Voices of West Tennessee Essay Contest, which DSCC conducts in association with the festival. Organizers were asking entrants to respond to specially-selected, age-appropriate readings about the Holocaust and to answer several specific questions.
Dyersburg State Community College officials will present awards in a variety of age divisions.
Funds from the Tennessee Humanities Council and the Bornblum Institute of Judaic Studies help pay for the event, which is free and open to the public.
For more information about the festival, call or e-mail festival director Mary Jane Farley at (731) 286-3298 or farley@dscc.edu.

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