Dissonant Memories, Fragmented Present: Exchanging Young Discourses between Israel and Germany

Release date: October 14, 2009 |

Goucher College will host a book presentation by Charlotte Misselwitz and Elik Elhanan, an editor and contributor, respectively, for Dissonant Memories, Fragmented Present: Exchanging Young Discourses between Israel and Germany. The book is a collection of essays about alternatives to national identity, varying remembrances of National Socialism and the Holocaust, and current social political and social developments in both countries.

The presentation will be held on Wednesday, October 14, at 7:30 p.m. in the Batza Room of the Athenaeum. Admission is free, and light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Uta Larkey, associate professor of German, at 410-337-6222 or ularkey@goucher.edu.

Misselwitz is a freelance writer for newspapers and radio stations, focusing on liminal spaces between Israel, Palestine, Russia, and Germany. She is working on her doctorate thesis, titled “Mediating the Muslim World in Western Media.”

Elhanan, born 1977 in Jerusalem, served as a soldier in an Israel Defense Forces combat unit from 1995 to 1998 and then became a conscience objector. He has been an activist with the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum since 1998. He is also a founding member of Combatants for Peace, created in 2005, and served as its Israeli coordinator from June 2006 until June 2007. Elhanan now lives in New York, where he is earning his doctorate in comparative literature, Hebrew, and Yiddish at Columbia University.

Their presentation at Goucher is made possible by the Evelyn Myers’37 Lecture Fund; co-sponsors for the event are Goucher College Hillel, the Judaic Studies Program, and the Department of Modern Languages and Literature.